"It's been pretty much smashed flat," Alastair said. "Keep your head tilted back."
Zeb did as he was told; he stared at the pastel green color of the ceiling in the associates' main room. "Guess my career as a beauty contestant is over."
"Oh, no." The doctor sounded amused. "I keep the associates in good tune. I'll pull it back into shape now, brace it up with some filling, and, most importantly, put a few words in the right ears." He pointed up, his expression significant, in a gesture that Zeb had found was consistent between the grim world and the faira reference to the Powers That Be. "By morning it'll be ready for Förster to smash flat."
"Thanks." Zeb turned his attention to the others. Gaby and Harris were getting dressedor something; Zeb decided not to speculatebut the rest were gathered in the main room. "Doc, what did you say they were calling me?"
"Der Alpdruck."
"Which means?"
"The nightmare."
"Oh, right." Zeb smiled. "That's what I told the last guy."
"Well, you made quite an impression. And managed to keep secret the fact that you're a dusky. Nothing in what Ruadan said suggested they were looking for a dusky."
Ish shot a quick look at Rudi, who was stretched out on the couch where he'd been attended the night before. She returned her attention to Doc quickly enough that Zeb doubted anyone else had seen her sudden change of focus.
Harris and Gaby, dressed in street clothes, arms around one another's waists, emerged from the hall and sat on the other couch beside Noriko.
"Now," Doc said, "while you athletes have been occupied today, the rest of us have been about some useful errands, as well. Alastair?"
"Trandil Niskin," the doctor said. "Our friend in Goldmacher. He's actually from Goldmacher. His official genealogy only goes back a couple of generations, to an orphan woman whose own child did not have a father listed, but circumstances suggest that the old lord of the manor was the father, which suggests Trandil may have grown up believing he was owed that particular castle, birthright, and so on.
"This Trandil worked his way through school. Graduated from the University of Bardulfburg in Scholars' Year Fourteen Oh Onethat's thirty-four years ago, Zeb. He took degrees in theology and biology"
"Interesting match," Zeb said.
"Then, later, added additional degrees in devisement theory and anthropology. I can't imagine a mind strange enough to embrace all those studies with equal facility. Anyway, guess who was going to school there at the same time he was."
"Aevar," Gaby said.
"Good guess, but only half right. Aevar, and Barrick Stelwright."
"Our museum patron from Neckerdam," Doc said.
Alastair nodded. "After graduation, Stelwright returns to the League of Ardree and begins his career as a reviewer and essayist, Aevar joins the Weserian armyas a lieutenant, naturally, he's the sort of nobleman who's willing to start all the way at the bottomand Trandil gets married and takes a job in Weseria's Ministry of Health, mostly writing books and pamphlets on things like hygiene, immunization, care for baby, that sort of thing. On the side, he gets involved with one of a bunch of little organizations that want to `cleanse' the Burian lands, get rid of foreign influences, make it the flagship nation of lights all over the world."
"Where are you getting all this information?" Zeb asked.
Alastair grinned at him. "Well, I started with official histories of the Reinis published by the Weserian government. Then I did some digging around over at the university, and finally I spent some time in the catacombs of a localand failing, I might addnewspaper that caters to duskies. The same one that helped me find the Kobolde."
"Catacombs? You were wandering around in tunnels with bodies and stuff?"
Harris shook his head. "Not literally catacombs, Zeb. That's what they call the newspaper archives. The morgue."
"Oh, right."
"So," Alastair continued. "The nations of the Burian Alliance get into border clashes with surrounding nations, get really full of themselves, start sinking shipping of nations supporting their enemies, and all of a sudden we're in the midst of the World Crisis, which some of us remember with far too much clarity."
Doc nodded, no humor in his face. "It was after it was done and the Burian Alliance broken that the Reinis truly emerged as a political party. The national governments were too busy coping with reparations, worldwide economic depression, and that sort of thing to pay them much attention."
"Back up, Doc," Alastair said. "One thing those of us in the New World tend to miss is the Burian outlook on the World Crisis. It wasn't just their worst wartime loss as a culture. They also talk about `the withering.' Are you familiar with it?"
Doc shook his head.
"Basically, the loss of most of a generation of lights, all killed during the war. For example, at the start of the World Crisis, there were two hundred sixty-eight known Daoine Sidhe in the Burian lands and Cretanis. At war's end, there were fewer than twenty, including you, the royal family of Cretanis, and Duncan Blackletter."
Doc frowned. "The Burians kept track of this sort of thing?"
"Oh, yes. They have an abiding interest in noble genealogy. Every noble, from petty lord to king, feels obliged to trace his ancestry back to a god, you know. So there were just a few Daoine Sidhe at war's end, and over the next few years, most of them die of one cause or another. Nothing suspicious; many of them are old, and all of them, like you, are basically insane."
Zeb saw Gaby shift in her seat, looking uncomfortable. Zeb had heard Noriko say that Gaby and Harris were chiefly responsible for the death of Duncan Blackletter earlier this year. Even Doc suddenly looked more grim.
"Most of them had children before they died, of course," Alastair said. "But those children weren't Daoine Sidhe. Most were crosses with other pure lights, but not Daoine Sidhe. So how many Daoine Sidhe do you suppose the Burians know of now?"
Doc's frown deepened. "How many?"
"Six. You, Queen Maeve of Cretanis, and her two sons and two daughters by your father." Alastair gave Doc a cynical smile. "You're the object of mixed feelings over here. One of the last known Daoine Sidhe. But you, uh, commingle with a dusky."
"Proficiently," Ish said, deadpan.
Doc grinned. "Thank you, dear."
"By the end of the World Crisis," Alastair continued, "Aevar had risen to the rank of general in his father's army, acquitted himself very well. Niskin was a field doctor. Stelwright was a foreign correspondent, reporting on the war for newspapers all across the League of Ardree. At the time, he was criticized for a lack of patriotism in his reporting, but in years since he's been praised for his unbiased analysis of events of the time."
Zeb snorted. "Unbiased. He probably just didn't want to say anything bad about his Burian buddies."
"In hindsight, that may have been exactly the case. After the war, the Nationalreinigungspartei is formed in Weseria and spreads to surrounding nations; Aevar, who is out of the army and acting more independently, and Niskin are both early joiners, and Aevar becomes front man for the party organizers. He later purges them once he's assumed true control."
"Purges as in kills?" Doc asked.
"No, he just drives them out of the party." Alastair shrugged. "Some die later when they form new splinter groups and then have violent clashes with the Reinis and the government. This whole process is extremely violent. Riots, rallies in which political opponents are beaten, that sort of thing. Niskin publishes a paper on the dangers of breeding with darks and duskiesit can lead not just to a debased race, but to insanity, you know."
"I'll be careful," Doc said.
"The full version of the paper, which was published just in one limited edition, proposes a national plan for improvement of the race. Incentives for lights breeding with lights. Increased tax burdens for dark and dusky familiesthe bigger the family, the higher, proportionately, their taxes go. The Reinis embrace the idea; the government reacts rather badly, and Niskin vanishes from the face of the world."
"Kidnapped?" Zeb asked.
Alastair shook his head. "I think not. I suspect that he and his familywhich includes a school-age daughter named Adima by this timewent underground, doing work for the Reinis. They don't show up again on the record until three years ago, when the Reinis seized control of Weseria. At that time, Doctor Trandil Niskin is ceded the castle and territory of Goldmacherand that is the last we hear of him."
"But we know that he has developed, or is about to develop, his bleaching cabinet," Doc said. "And, in all likelihood, the devisement that destroyed the Danaan Heights Building is his. And the long-distance puppetry."
"And," Rudi said, "he had to have been working with Duncan Blackletter. Sending us Bergmonks to the grim world to find things."
Doc nodded. "He has been busy. What is his plan, then?"
Alastair spread his hands, palms up, suggesting that he was out of information. "Unknown."
Ish looked unhappy. "You are the plan, Doc. Everything they did in Neckerdam was in relation to you. Sending the Bergmonks to the grim world to find you. Kidnapping you. Then, when you escaped death at their hands, setting things up so you'd fail to stop the destruction of building after building and be humiliated."
"That makes no sense," Doc said. "That first morning, when I was done doing honors in my father's name, they could just have used a rifle instead of a dart-rifle. I'd be dead. Much simpler. The Reinis are devoted to that sort of efficiency. Why did they not kill me then?"
"I don't know." Ish turned to Rudi. "Is there anything you've failed to tell us about all this?"
"Wait a tick," Rudi said. "I'll ask me brother Albin." He returned her stare, emotionless.
"So I take it we'll be visiting Goldmacher tonight," Zeb said.
Doc shook his head. "No. I expect they will have increased security there, or that Niskin will have moved his operations. We need more information before we stage another assault on Goldmacher. Tonight we'll be visiting Casnar's gathering. At the Temple of Ludana."
"Right, right."
"Are you up for it?"
"Let's see." Zeb counted off on his fingers. "In the last day, I've jumped off trains and cars"
"And a balcony," Noriko said.
"And a balcony. I've been shot at, punched, kicked, slammed into the ground, overheated, dehydrated . . ." Zeb counted up his fingers and smiled. "Sure, I'm up for it."
Doc turned to Rudi. "And you?"
"I think I'm still a bit worn down," Rudi said. "If you think it's life-or-death that I be there, of course, I'll come. Otherwise, I'll get me some more rest."
"We'll be fine," Doc said. "Get all the sleep you need. All right. So it will be me, Zeb, Ish, and Gaby at the Temple of Ludana. Harris, Noriko, and Alastair at the Hall of Tomorrow. Rudi here. Do we have everything we need?"
"I hate to be a pest," Zeb said. "But I did like the anonymity my coat and such gave me last night, but they stink so bad of coal smoke now"
"Not a problem," Harris said. "That's the sort of detail I tend to all day long. I had your hat cleaned and the rest burnedtoo many leads for the local police if I got them cleaned, too. I bought replacements. At different stores, of course. And got you a present. All in the name of your scaring the hell out of those you don't bother to beat up."
"Thanks." Zeb gave him a grin. "You've actually gotten kind of efficient in your old age."
"Keep it up, Army. I'll show you old age."
"I'm not sure I get it," Zeb said.
He sat alone in the back seat of the Foundation's sedan; Doc and Gaby were in the front seat. They were parked on a side street within clear view of the front and right side of the Temple of Ludana, with its curious mixture of straight, fluted columns and walls of irregular stone. Small fixed spotlights at ground level kept the front of the building bathed in light, but they kept their attention on the side wall, where shadows had moved at irregular intervals for the last half hour.
"There's nothing to get," Gaby said. "All that movement is Casnar's guests sneaking in a side door."
"Not that. First Doc says Ish is going to be with us. Then he drops her off a block from our quarters. What's that all about?"
Gaby gave Doc a look, too, as though she were curious but just hadn't bothered to ask.
Doc considered, then shrugged. "She's watching Rudi. He's been seen going to talk-boxes and making calls when he's supposed to be doing other things."
Zeb felt his stomach tighten. "Do you think he's given us up?"
"Not to the Reinis, no." Doc shook his head; the motion was emphatic. "We'd all have been dead by now. But I don't know what he's up to, and I feel it would be a good thing to find out." He drew out a pocket watch and consulted it. "Still a chime before the appointed bell. We need to get in there if we're to find out what my brother's up to. Gaby, you'll come in with me. Zeb, if I could prevail on you to stay outside as a watchman?"
"Sure. Final question. Something I meant to ask about when we were here last night."
"Go ahead."
Zeb pointed at the front of the temple, then at other buildings along the street. "The temple's the only building with main doors facing this way. With all the other buildings, I'm seeing ass end. Is there a reason?"
"Tradition," Doc said, and got out. "These are old buildings. Most old buildings in Europe face east to greet the rising sun. Ludana's provinces include death, so she faces westward, toward the setting suntoward lands of the dead."
"I'm sorry I asked."
"No, she's a beneficial goddess. The death she concerns herself with is the one that holds the promise of rebirth."
"Oh, cool. I'll go for that death instead of one of her competitors' inferior deaths."
Doc gave him an admonishing look, then he and Gaby left the car. They hurried toward the temple, circling around to find an entryway at the building's rear.
Zeb, trusting the spot they'd chosen to parkwell away from any streetlightsto help keep him concealed, moved into the deep shadow of the adjacent building and put on his disguise of the other night.
Harris had been right; the overcoat he'd bought for Zeb was far superior to the other one. Not only was it of a better make, but it was reversible, medium green on one side and black on the other.
And in one pocket Zeb found Harris's gift. It was a knit ski cap, also in black, but Harris had apparently had it modified. The openings for eyes and mouth were now covered by a sheer black material, something like the stuff ladies' stockings were made of here. When he put the thing on and looked in the car's side mirror, he saw only a creepy black outline. He decided to dispense with the scarf; this was disguise enough.
He grinned to himself. That feeling of liberation was still there; the anonymity the disguise and the darkness afforded him charged him up once more. He clamped his hat on his head.
Keeping to the shadows, his hands in his pockets on his pistols, he moved toward the temple, circling around toward the left side of the building and the deep, dark alley there between it and the next building over.
Ish, wearing drab green street clothes that made her as anonymous as any woman in Bardulfburg, her hair now pinned up under a blond wig, waited at her sidewalk table, a book open before her, her attention on the front of the Foundation's apartment building half a block down.
She'd only been there a few minutes, but had to school herself against impatience. Whyever did Doc choose me to wait and watch? she asked herself. He knows I hate waiting. But she knew the answer. No one else he might have left here would be as likely to get the job done. To follow the man if he left. She added an item from her own agenda: to kill him if he had turned traitor.
A moment later she saw him, Rudi, his bulky overcoat making him more anonymous, emerging from the building's main doors. He looked up and down the street, then crossed.
Now that he was on the same side of the street as she, it was harder for her to see him. She rose, but he had turned and was moving toward her at a brisk pace. She sat again. A few moments later, he passed, giving her no sign he'd noticed her. She rose to follow.
It was best for her not to be truly herself now. He might feel her eyes on the back of his neck. No, she should be half herself, half the other one. That would help her if she had to kill him. She let Rudi get thirty and forty paces ahead, and did not look at him as she followedshe concentrated on the sidewalk at his feet, on the storefronts to his right.
He stopped at a coin talk-box and stepped into the booth. She did not slow her pace; she walked up to the booth, heard muted bell-like ringing as he deposited a single coin into the device, and she continued on past. Had he seen her duck into a storefront or falter as his gaze fell upon her, he would probably go suspicious; this way, she had a chance to remain unseen for a few moments longer.
A few paces further, she reached an alley mouth and turned into it. In moments, she shucked her overcoat, wig and hat. Above her were bronze bars over a painted window; above that was a stone ledge, lighter in color than the building's brick. She leaped up onto the window sill, not bothering to grab the bars for balance, then instantly leaped again, scrambling up onto the ledge. The same arrangement was in effect above, another window, another ledge, and in moments she stood on the ledge two stories above the street.
The ledge was a double handspan wide, ample room for someone with her gifts. She turned the corner and headed back toward Rudi's booth, moving as fast as a normal person moves on a sidewalk.
She was in plain sight on this ledge, but above the tops of the streetlights, and no one down on the sidewalk was looking up. That, and the fact that the wig and coat she'd discarded were the only light-colored things she'd been wearing, made it less likely she'd be seen.
She walked the length of this building on the ledge. The next building, the one Rudi's talk-box booth stood before, had no such ledge, but there was a series of balconies half a story down. She dropped noiselessly to the nearest balcony, between its owner's potted plants, then moved from balcony to balcony, taking the rails and gaps between them like hurdles.
That put her immediately above Rudi's booth. It had glass on three sides, looking out on the street and down the sidewalk in both directions, but none facing the building. She could not wait until the sidewalks were clear of traffic, so she swung over the balcony rail, dropped to grab the bottom edge of the balcony, and swung to land behind the booth, a single fluid motion. She came down in a crouch, quiet, and looked both ways along the sidewalk. People approaching from her left had not noticed her. A blond man approaching from the right was looking at her, blinking in some surprise; she offered him a conspiratorial smile, put her finger to her lips to shush him, and jerked her thumb at the booth. Let him read into that whatever he wishes, she thought.
Apparently he did. He grinned at her and kept on going.
She leaned up against the booth and listened.
"No, not until we're sure," she heard Rudi saying. "Better for me to stay here and keep gatherin' facts. I've done all right so far. Huh?" He was silent for a long moment. "No, he's a dead man, I promise you. I'll pull the trigger on him myself." Another silence. "I understand. I'll talk to you then." He hung up.
When he stepped out of the booth, Ish moved up behind him and put the barrel of her snub-nosed revolver into his back. "Grace on you, Rudi."
He jerked in surprise. "Ish." He hazarded her a look over his shoulder. "Ah, you look very different with your hair all up like that."
"Walk," she said. "Back this way. Keep your hands where I can see them." She got him steered back toward the alley. She was cold inside, cold with what she knew she had to do to him, colder still that someone had dared to betray Doc.
"You don't sound like yourself, Ish."
"Why did you do this, Rudi? Did they offer you money?"
"Money?" He sounded scornful. "It's a matter of revenge, Ish. Surely you understand revenge."
"Oh, I do."
"Why aren't we going back to the rooms?"
"I left my coat back here. In an alley."
"Ah, of course."
In silence, they passed several pedestrians headed the other way. None apparently saw the gun, almost invisible in the darkness, in Ish's hand.
As they neared the alley, they came upon a pedestrian, a lean, dark-haired man walking with his hands in his overcoat pockets. Rudi stopped. "Ish," he said, "allow me to introduce you to Innis, my gunman friend."
The man stopped as well, looking confused.
Time dilated for Ish. She saw the man's hand begin to emerge from his pocket. Another tick of the clock and his gun would come into view, then he could turn it on her. She shifted her aim to cover him.
Rudi's elbow took her on the side of the jaw. The world snapped sideways and her vision became skewed. Oddly, there was no pain, just a feeling of detachment.
Her view of the world continued to slide sideways as she fell. The man's hand emerging, empty, from its pocket. Rudi's fist rising with majestic slowness toward the man's jaw.
Then all was darkness.
In the alley beside the Temple of Ludana, Zeb stared up at a single ray of light.
The alley was otherwise as black as tar paper. But ten or twelve feet above the ground, the shutter over a window was slightly askew and a thin shaft of light slanted from it to the concrete alley floor.
Zeb wouldn't have guessed there were shutters up there had this one not been misaligned. Now, looking at the way the shutter itself seemed to be tilted rather than just slightly open, he decided that it had been damaged. Worth taking a look, he decided.
The window was above a sort of wooden box with a slanted lid. The lid wouldn't open; by touch, Zeb found a padlock keeping it shut. He put some pressure on the lid and gauged, from the way it did not give, that it would hold his weight. He scrambled up on it. From the highest point of the lid, against the building wall, he could easily reach the bottom of the shutter.
When he tugged it, it swung open, but sagged on its bottom hinge; the top hinge was, in the new light spilling from the window, revealed as broken. The other half of the shutter opened normally. The window beyond was open. Zeb got a good grip on the lip of the window and pulled himself up to look within.
He found himself looking through a row of gray stone columns at a long, stone-floored room beyond. It was the chamber he and the associates had met the Kobolde in the previous night. Now the candelabra were gone; dim light came from electrical bulbs out of sight beyond the columns, where the ceiling was higher. It had only seemed bright by comparison with the blackness of the alley. The stone benches where they'd sat last night had been moved, arranged like pews in a church, and more brought in behind them to seat a congregation before the hearthstone.
There were no people. There was nothing at all suspicious to see. But from here Zeb could see the marks, as though from a crowbar, on the hard wood on both halves of the shutter, beside the broken interior latch.
Zeb grabbed the top of the unbroken shutter half. With much pulling and grunting, he managed to squeeze himself feet first through the window and dropped to the floor beyond. The sound of his leather heels on the stone floor seemed as loud as a pistol shot, but no one came to investigate.
From here, he could see the high ceiling beyond the colonnade, the three chandelier-style light fixtures, one of which was lit with only four of its twelve bulbs glowing.
Zeb heard distant murmuring, voices in some other chamber, one beyond any of the several doors he counted leading from this room.
He moved out into the chamber to take a look around. If someone had broken in, why into this chamber? Windows and doors had to have led into smaller, less conspicuous parts of the temple. But nothing, other than the window, seemed out of place.
No, that wasn't quite right. His attention fell on a white mark on the circular hearthstone. A portion of the stone had been chipped away; the damage was cleaner, whiter than the rock surrounding it. Zeb felt a moment of unease, but decided this couldn't be too bad; it wasn't the building's dedicatory plaque, after all.
There was a sound, the faintest tap of leather on stone, behind him. Zeb spun, drawing his right-hand automatic from his pocket.
Against the far wall, where the greatest number of doors were arrayed, stood a man. He was taller than Zeb, very fair, with white hair well on its retreat toward complete disappearance. His features were long and pointed, his nose and chin especially so; his fingers, coming up and spreading as he reflexively raised his hands, were unnaturally long, with pointed nails at their tips. He wore a formal suit in an eye-hurting red, with tie and waistcoat in green, and pince-nez glasses. His eyes were wide open with surprise, his expression frightened but somehow comical. His mouth worked but no words came out.
"Speak Cretanis?" Zeb asked.
The man found his voice. "Yes. Cretanis, Burian, Lorian, Isperian, Castilian . . ." His accent seemed like a halfway point between British and German.
"Never mind that. Who are you?"
"I am the high priest of Ludana." The man shrugged. He did not sound as though he were puffed up with his own importance.
"Put your hands down. I'm not going to shoot you." Zeb lowered his gun, but kept it in hand.
"Ah. Thank you. May I go?"
"Not yet. Back there. There's a gathering of princes and such?"
The man hesitated, then nodded. "You are here to, ah, confront them?"
"No, I'm just looking at your damage. Your busted shutter, and this."
"Yes." The man moved uncertainly toward Zeb. He looked down at the damaged stone and grimaced. "It apparently happened last night. Unnecessary knockerism, that."
"Knockerism?"
"Damage for no purpose? Is the word no longer used?"
"Oh, yeah. Knockerism. Why would they damage a hearthstone?"
"I suspect the damage is symbolic. The hearthstone is the heart of the house." When Zeb didn't reply, he continued, "In ancient times, it would be the first stone laid in a new home, and cooking would be done on it."
Zeb felt the unease return, stronger than ever. "So this would be the stone most identified with the house."
"Of course."
"Uh, does this temple have a dedicatory plaque?"
Finally, the man smiled; his amusement was obviously at Zeb's ignorance. "Too old a building for that, I'm afraid. Plaques like that are a modern conceit."
"Shit. Where are the princes?"
The man hesitated.
"I'm not going to hurt them, you damned fool. Where are they?"
The man gestured at the largest door on the wall to his left.
Zeb headed that way. "Other than them, is there anyone else in this building?"
"A few subordinate priests, temple workers"
"Get them out now. This place is going to blow up." Zeb threw the door open, revealing darkened hallway beyond.
"A bomb?" The man's voice emerged as a squeak.
"Worse."
Rudi ascended the steps of the Temple of the Suns. He was still swearing to himselfswearing because he'd been caught out by Ixyail and had to abandon his role with the associates, swearing harder because he'd been forced to strike a woman. But at the top of the steps, he was able to wrest himself away from unhappy thoughts for a moment; he paused to admire the building's soaring columns, the massiveness of the dome. Then he passed between the statues of Sol and Sollinvictus, and the Weserian army guards who stood beside them, and headed into the main temple chamber, the long room that was always open to the elements.
It was, he saw, fairly crowded. A huge fire, the so-called Eternal Flame, blazed toward the rear of this chamber, at the exact heart of the temple; the fire itself was a circle some six paces across and rose to the height of a man. It was surrounded by visitors to the temple who stood about in admirationfar enough back not to be scorched by the heat.
Rudi's lip twisted. As though it weren't a simple gas flame, he thought.
On the long walls of the main chamber were murals done in the same style as most of the rest of the art he'd seen in Bardulfburg. The one on the north wall showed the goddess Sol in her glowing chariot, closely pursued by a flying wolf; the beast's mouth was open and slavering in anticipation of a meal. The one on the south wall showed Sollinvictus, also in a shining chariot; he held a bow in his hand and trained it on some unlucky target far below.
Other visitors to the temple walked the length of the murals or stepped back to try to take in their immensity. Some bumped into the people circling the central flame. An aether crew was set up against the wall beneath Sollinvictus' chariot, just where the god would shoot if he released his bowstring, the announcer talking into a microphone in Burian in the cultured tones of a broadcaster.
Rudi looked over the two pieces of art. Just like everything new in this city, he decided, the murals slanted their message to the Weserian outlook on things. They represented the two sun-gods in equal dimensions, and thus the builders could say they dealt equally with both. But the paintings made an invincible champion of the favorite local god, while making a victim of his northern counterpart. Legend said that Sol would someday be dragged down and destroyed by her pursuer, true . . . but the only reason to display this story above all others was to enhance Sollinvictus' superiority.
Rudi turned his attention back to the crowd. He said he'd be here. But his contact was nowhere to be seen.
His contact had been right, though. Something was up. The place was busier even than a newly-dedicated civic monstrosity ought to be. He saw priests, distinctive in the red-and-orange robes of their office, hurrying about. Odd that so many of them had the lean, hard look of military men. He saw a fair amount of traffic in and out of the inconspicuous brown doors that lined the main chamber; men in suits and street dress entered and emerged at a rate that suggested they were banks of offices rather than temple precincts.
He saw the man who'd tortured him. The light who had promised to improve him was walking more or less his way from the temple's main entrance, angling toward the door beneath the forward hooves of Sollinvictus' chariot horses. He wore a nice suit, an incongruous black but with a festive gold waistcoat beneath, and seemed intent on his mission; he did not notice Rudi.
Of course, Rudi thought, I'm not in disguise now. He turned to follow the man and tapped the butt of the automatic under his left arm. It wouldn't be too hard just to get up beside him and put seven shots into his gut. Getting out past the guards might be tricky, though.
"Hear me."
The words echoed through the chamber, loud and sudden enough to make Rudi stagger. He fell to one knee and clapped his hands over his ears against the volume. All around him, all across the chamber, people were shouting, runningthere seemed to be no consistent direction to their flightor doing as Rudi was and protecting their ears.
"I am Volksonne."
The voice, that of a male, seemed to come from everywhere. Oddly, the words were in Cretanis, but Rudi thought he could hear words in the same voice, words he didn't understand, echoing faintly beneath them. Rudi caught sight of something strange happening in the vicinity of the Eternal Flame and turned that way.
The flame was rising, condensing in its upper reaches, becoming approximately human in shape.
"I am the god of the people. I am the god of the pure, of the clean, of the rightful. I claim this house as my own."
The flames settled into a shape, that of a man ten paces in height. His skin and garmentsmodern trousers and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, they could have been the everyday clothes of a working man or the casual attire of a member of the noble classwere at times red, orange, or gold, seemingly made up of fire. His face was handsome, with the directness of a soldier and the perfection of a star of film plays.
He was still surrounded by the circle of gas flame. The people who had stood about it were backing away, some of them having fallen and now scuttling away on their elbows. But the fiery thing who called himself Volksonne did not lower his gaze to study them; he stared off into the distant east, beyond the limits of the temple.
In the space between the god-thing's words, Rudi heard the aether announcer's voice, speaking faster, the pitch of his words rising with his alarm.
"I will lead the people of the Burian lands to new greatness," Volksonne said. Rudi noticed that his lips barely moved, and everyone on the floor listened with the same raptness, as though all understood his words. "I will shower blessings on the faithful, disaster on our enemies. I will cast light to dispel the darkness. Go now. Leave this house. Be witness to the destruction of evil." He gestured to the main entryway. "Go."
Some of the witnesses were already going, already halfway to the outside. Others scrambled in their wake. Rudi was hit by several of the fleeing visitors, men and women too rattled to notice or care about people in their way. He rose and followed, but kept as much attention as he could on the fiery circle.
Volksonne stood there, but was no longer pointing due east. His arm was rising into the sky. As he gestured, he became less distinct, with flares bursting everywhere from his skin. Then, with a roar of flame, his now-indistinct body collapsed back into the circle of fire.
Rudi made it outside the temple building. The crowd had stopped there, no longer fleeing, nor heading down the steps as he'd expected them to.
He followed their gaze.
Up in the eastern sky, a new sun shone. It roared to the west, toward them, then over and past the Temple of the Suns, arcing toward the ground.
Harris emerged from General Ritter's private office onto the walkway that overlooked the main chamber of the Hall of Tomorrow. The chamber featured displays along its walls, pictures in the same style that decorated much of Bardulfburg, but these showed happy blond people in faux futuristic clothes flying along with jetpacks and picnic baskets, acting as foremen in factories worked by robots that looked like water heaters, returning from work to homes with architectural styling that made them look like Roman villas.
Displays were scattered around the chamber. Some were model kitchens with appliances that had to look futuristic from an early 20th-century perspective. Others showed sleek automobiles that looked like flattened train engines painted in bright colors. On one table was a mockup of an automated book readera book lay open under a green light and a voice emerged from the associated speaker, reading the text in Burian.
Then there was the model of Bardulfburg. It was longer and wider than the corresponding model of Neckerdam, but on the same scale. Much of the model was in naturalistic colors, showing buildings and grasslands in their proper hues, but many of the models were slightly brighter than the buildings they represented.
Noriko, her revolver in hand, standing guard, turned to look up at Harris. "Have you found anything?"
Harris shook his head. "The office is a front. There's next to no paperwork in the file cabinets. No blueprints or anything. Ritter has to do his real work somewhere else. That and the fact that there are no guards on this place, and the locks were simple enough for you to do in your sleep"
Noriko smiled.
"suggest to me that the government has no real worry about this place. Alastair, what've you got?"
Alastair looked at him, but did not take his hand away from his normal eye. "Watch this. Übermorgen."
Color welled up from the lower portions of the model. There was more of it than with the Neckerdam model, and it rose higher, in many places taking the shape of new, gigantic buildings superimposed over what looked like older neighborhoods.
"It will fade in a few moments," Alastair said, "but you can do that all day long. The activation word is on plaques at both ends of the table."
"Another toy," Harris said. "But is it the model?"
Alastair shook his head. "It doesn't have the additional devisements laid on it that Teleri's second one did. It does have some written annotations on it that I can only see with my Good Eye. All the buildings erected since Aevar came to power are brighter in color to stand out, and they all have dates of dedication on them in that special writing." The swell of colors faded back into the table's depths, and Alastair picked up the model of the Temple of the Suns, holding it forth for Harris. "See?"
"No Good Eye, Alastair, remember? Two bad ones."
Alastair began to fit the model back into place, then leaned over it and peered at the base left on the model. "Who in the world is Volksonne?"
"Big guy from Nyrax," Harris said. "I went to school with his daughter, took her out a couple of times." At Alastair's confused look, he relented. "I'm kidding you. Never heard of him. Noriko?"
She shook her head, her attention still on the doors.
"The name sounds like that of a sun-god," Alastair continued. "In Burian, it would be `People's Sun' or `Nation's Sun,' more or less. But Volksonne isn't one of the typical names or epithets of the god of the sun, like Invictus is." He gestured. "The writing's here on the base."
"We have a problem," Noriko said. She was no longer staring at the door. Her attention was on the chamber's high windows.
Outside, it had just turned from nighttime to day. The sun was overhead . . . but setting with unnatural speed.
Zeb raced down the hallway, which had numerous doors to either side, some of them closed, others open into small offices. He slowed, listening, and heard the murmur again, this time louder, from ahead. He could make out words, a woman's voice speaking in Cretanis: " . . . turn to the question of Burian rearmament. Since the ascendancy of the Reini party, we've seen a strengthening of military forces, including increased enlistment in armies throughout the Burian League, andsignificantlyfunding for those armies . . ."
He turned the final corner as he reached it and saw before him a double door, partly open . . . flanked by Doc and Gaby, half concealed within the shadows of the poorly-lit corridor.
They looked at him, surprised. "What's happening?" Doc asked, his voice a whisper.
Zeb took a deep breath to settle his nerves and slid to the left, out of line of sight of the doorway. Beyond, he caught a glimpse of a large round table; at the far end, behind a lectern, stood a tall woman, young except for her commanding bearing, with hair as dark as the night outside.
Zeb pitched his voice to match Doc's. "They're going to"
Then it hit him, a sudden burning sensation in his right palm. It caused him to drop his automatic; it clattered against the stone floor. He stared for a moment at his palm and knew what the sudden pain represented.
He bent to retrieve the gun. "No time to talk," he said, and stuffed the pistol in his pocket. Then he charged through the door into the room.
He heard cries of consternation from the people seated around the table. He ignored them, leaping up between two seated attendees and skidding to the table's center. "Shut up and listen," he said, pitching his voice deepnot just to disguise it, but because it was the voice of command he'd developed for the Army, for the ring. "A missile is about to hit this building. It's going to blow up and you're going to die. Get out now."
There was no immediate reaction, just a rise in the hubbub of voices. Someone said, "Put up your hands."
Zeb turned. One of the men rising to his feet had a gun in his hands, a small pistol, and was aiming at him. "Don't be a moron," he said. "Run or die." He suited action to words and ran back the way he'd come, leaping off the table, charging through the door. The man with the gun did not fire at him.
Gaby was at the first intersection. He reached her and turned toward the main hall, the only way he was sure of that led to the outside. She fell in step beside him. He could hear leather shoes clattering up the hall behind him. His hand burned worse than ever. "Where's Doc?"
"Gone after his brother." There was pure agitation in Gaby's voice. "Casnar made some opening comments, then handed the meeting off to the Queen of Bolgia while he went in search of a water closet."
"Great." Zeb crashed through the door into the temple's main hall. The big doors at the far end, leading to the antechamber and then to the street outside, were open. A man and a woman in workers' clothes, leaving by that exit, turned to look at Zeb. Then turned away and ran faster.
Zeb and Gaby got to the street moments after the workers. They turned to glance at the onrushing brightness of the descending sun. It seemed huge, large enough to engulf the entire temple and portions of buildings to either side, and Zeb fancied he could feel its heat already. Fear gave him greater speed; he raced back toward where Doc had left their car, Gaby showing no difficulty in keeping up with him.
The sun came to earth. Zeb heard the sound, an enormous crump that was the building's upper story being instantly consumed.
Then there was the blast, heated air roaring out to engulf him, to hammer him forward . . .
Zeb came to with his head ringing. He tasted blood and his nose felt as though it had been pounded flat again.
He lay facedown on the street, and in his peripheral vision he could see flames flickering in the distance. When he tried to roll over, an irregular surface above him prevented his action.
Dazed, he looked around. There was a wheel beside his head to the left. He was under a car. Beyond, in the distance, the flattened Temple of Ludana burned, as did the near edges of buildings to its left and behind; flames roared up into the night sky. Men and women, mere silhouettes, arrived on foot to stand just beyond the point where the heat would do them harm. Zeb heard distant sirens becoming louder.
He couldn't have been out for very long. There was no sign of Gaby, but he didn't remember making it all the way back to the car, and someone had to have shoved him beneath it. He elbow-crawled out from under the vehicle on the sidewalk side and stood, automatically dusting himself off. His hand no longer burned, though the bruises he'd picked up in the last two days' worth of fighting, especially the one on his thigh, twinged in protest.
A car, its headlights dark, roared past him. As it came close, he glimpsed the nearest occupant, the man on the passenger side, through the window. Reflections of the nearby fire in windows all around gave Zeb a little light to go by, and he recognized the man. Casnar, a thin smile on his face. Then the car was past and down the block; only when it reached the next intersection and turned did its headlights come on.
Still feeling unsteady, and very conspicuous here despite his dark clothing, Zeb climbed into the back seat of the sedan.
Moments later, two of the distant silhouettes grew larger as they approached; they resolved themselves into Gaby and Doc. Gaby ducked to peer under the car as she got near and Zeb waved at her from the back seat. "Zeb! Are you all right?" She got into the driver's seat; Doc got in on the passenger side.
"I feel like I've been through a garlic press one square inch at a time," Zeb said. "I can barely walk. But I'm functional. Did you put me under the car?"
"I had to drag you a few yards and then shove you for a while. You're heavy."
"You're strong."
Doc stared, apparently emotionless, at the raging fire. "Your timing was close to perfect, Zeb. Minimal loss of life."
"Minimal? I was hoping for none." Zeb sighed. "Who died?"
"My brother. I couldn't find him."
"No, he got out. I saw him driving away."
Doc's head whipped around. He stared at Zeb. "Say you're not joking."
"No, he drove off. I'm sure of it. He was with someonesomebody else was driving."
"Drove off." Doc repeated the words as though they were in a language he'd never heard before. "He hadn't had time to look around, to assure himselfdid he look as though he were being compelled?"
"No. In fact . . ." Zeb's stomach sank as the implications of what he'd seen sank in. "In fact, he was smiling just a little bit."
Doc turned to face forward. His motion was slow. He expelled a long breath.
They watched the building burn. A fire truck arrived, scattering the people in its way as it set itself up next to the nearest hydrant. More cars passed their sedan. "That was Dalphina," Gaby said as one roared by. "She was at the back of the room. She would have been one of the last ones to get out."
"So they might all have survived," Doc said. "Good." There was no emotion to his tone.
Gaby gave him a close look. "Doc. Back to our quarters?"
"Yes."
"No." That was Ish, leaning in through the window opposite Zeb; she appeared so suddenly and silently that he jumped, startled. She opened the door and climbed in; despite the darkness, Zeb thought he caught a glimpse of a stain or bruise on her jaw. "It's not safe there."
"Explain," Doc said.
She leaned away from him, taken aback by what she apparently read in his face. "I caught Rudi calling someone on the talk-box. A local call, one coin. He was talking about killing someoneyou, I expect. I confronted him, but . . ." She made a noise of disgust. "I've always suspected that if you have someone covered and a new problem appears, the thing to do is first shoot the one you're covering. Now I know it's true." She gave Doc a look of apology. "He got away. I'm sorry, Doc."
Something finally penetrated his shell of emotionlessness, a flicker of concern, and his face transformed, became human again. "Are you all right?"
"I won't be chewing through rawhide bonds anytime soon," she said. "But I am well."
He smiled at her words, at some memory they shared. "Very well. Harris and the others will, if I know them, be coming here. We'll wait. Zeb and I are terribly conspicuous. If I could prevail on you two ladies to linger closer to the fire, direct our other associates back to the car if they arrive, learn what you can . . ."
"We're on it," Gaby said, and exited. Ish leaned forward to kiss Doc, then followed.
In the comparative silence that followed, Zeb said, "Your brother was in on it, wasn't he?"
"Half brother. And it appears so." Doc leaned into the seat, but the action didn't look like relaxing; it was a slow collapse. "It explains a lot. Such as how they knew to capture me at the temple where I'd be honoring my father. Such as how they knew Ixyail is a dusky."
"What are you going to do?"
Staring forward, not meeting Zeb's gaze, Doc shook his head. "I wish I knew."