There was a spot of light on its surface, he noticed; one of the pinholes in the dome was directly in line with the moon, and a beam of its light was now falling directly upon that thing upon the altar. He wondered whether it was intentional.

Then, so suddenly that he almost lost his balance in his startlement, the room was filled with chanting; the incense swirled more thickly than ever, billowing forth from a dozen niches spaced around the wall. Priests appeared behind the altar, completely hidden in black robes that exaggerated the usual looseness to near parody; one reached forward, and what Garth suddenly realized was a cloth cover vanished from the thing on the altar.

It immediately blazed up into scintillating light, so bright in the darkness as to seem almost blinding; it was a great crystal, a sphere with a million facets, which trapped the thin beam of moonlight and reflected and refracted it into a glittering display of pure white light. Garth thought for a moment that it was a diamond, but dismissed that as absurd; no diamond could be so large, and he doubted that even diamond could catch the light like that. This was some sort of gem or crystal that was totally unfamiliar to him.

It was also a gem he would have to steal, if he were to perform his errand in Dыsarra.

He knelt, listening to the priests chant, and wondered how he was ever going to manage it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

There were words to the chant, and the ceremony undoubtedly had some specific significance, but Garth made out none of it; he was too lost in his own thoughts to listen, and the echoing dome distorted the singsong enough to make it difficult to discern its meaning. It sounded to the overman like nothing more than a randomly shifting drone.

He paid little attention as the dark-robed priests lifted the great crystal and moved it ceremoniously through elaborate patterns in the air, alternately sprinkling the crowd with sparkles of reflected moonlight and plunging them into darkness; he was planning out his actions. There were questions he would have asked the tavern-girl, but she was lost in the chanting, her lips moving silently, her face enraptured. He saw instantly, when a stray glint of moonlight lit her features, that she would be of no use to him for awhile.

Since this was the temple of night, it seemed a safe assumption that all prayers and worship were nocturnal; by day the place should be almost deserted, though probably there would be a few priests about. It was already well after midnight; he had merely to wait until dawn, grab the crystal, and depart. If possible he would wait until no priests were about, but if necessary he could force his way through them. There was no sign that they carried weapons of any sort; a drawn sword should awe them into letting him pass, most particularly since most humans had an almost superstitious fear of overmen, who were, after all, a good bit larger and stronger than humans, and by human standards hideous monsters.

It would be advisable to find some quiet hiding place where he could wait until daybreak; if he merely stayed where he was he might draw unwanted attention. He considered leaving and then returning at sunrise, but rejected it immediately. He had no idea how to open that swinging wall, or even whether it could be opened from the outside at all. Even if it could be, it might be kept locked by day.

The ritual, ended with a simple chant that the worshippers repeated along with the priests; every other word was the name of the goddess, and it was just six words, but Garth could not make out the other three. It was recited three times; then the priest lifted the crystal one last time, placed it on the altar, and lifted its cloth cover back over it. Its final gleam lit the priest's eyes, despite his overhanging cowl, and Garth started with surprise; the priest's eyes were as red as his own! For an instant he thought that perhaps the robed figure was another overman, but dismissed it; he was too small, by far, and like the person who had admitted him to the chamber, his hair was gleaming white, while all overmen had coal-black hair. Besides, that quick glimpse had shown him eyes with pupil, iris, and white, while overmen had only pupil and iris. No, the priest was just a freak of some sort.

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.