Light also assaulted him, a sharp white light totally unlike the yellow of torchlight or the red of a fire. This glare was tinged with blue, like the flash of lightning. He ignored it. He was in no mood for caution. When the door stopped swinging, he stepped through.

He was at the bottom of a set of uneven steps, steep even for an overman, and all crooked; he clambered up them into the temple proper.

It was a single vast room, twenty feet wide, a hundred long, and at least fifty feet high, not counting the interior of the dome. The walls were jagged, rough stone, and seemed to lean inward; Garth was not sure if this were some illusion, or whether the room actually narrowed toward the top. The floor was broken, uneven flagstones, but far more negotiable than the obsidian courtyard. The light came from dozens of flares that blazed on one wall, burning with a vivid, painfully bright light and casting sharp-edged black shadows of the score or so of worshippers who knelt before the altar. The shadows did not move; the flares had none of the comforting flicker of more ordinary flames.

The altar itself was a single chunk of granite; behind it stood three black-robed priests, faces hidden by hoods, and on it lay a naked young woman-perhaps only a girl. Garth was a poor judge of human age or maturity.

The central priest held a long narrow-bladed dirk clutched in his fist; the man to his right held a coiled whip, and the third priest held a loop of ordinary rope.

The wailing came from the worshippers; the priests and the girl on the altar were making no sound that Garth could detect.

Behind the priests, carved on the end wall of the temple, Garth glimpsed the image of a smiling naked woman, hands outstretched toward the altar; the shadows of the priests made it hard to distinguish details. Although the image he had seen in the marketplace had been robed and held weapons, he recognized the face and evil smile of the idol; this was Sai, goddess of pain and suffering.

No one was paying any attention to him. He put down his sack of bloodstained Aghadite gold, and strode forward across the shattered floor. As he drew nearer, he saw that the priest's dirk had blood upon its tip, and that the naked girl's body was laced with narrow, shallow cuts. He wondered whether the ceremony was to have ended with her death as a human sacrifice, or whether she would merely have been tortured and released; it was clear from her face that she was not a willing participant. He grinned at the prospect of frustrating these sadists. It would be almost as satisfying as killing Aghadites. Still, he hoped he could avoid killing any, not only because he disliked causing unnecessary deaths, but because he did not want the Aghadites to have the satisfaction.

He was even with the back of the small crowd of worshippers, now; he bellowed as the priest lowered the dagger for another cut. He did not want the girl injured further. After all, she was what he had found upon the altar, and therefore what he was to take back to the Forgotten King. He wondered what the old man would make of her.

Startled, the priest stopped his motion; the crowd's wailing wavered.

"Drop that knife or die, priest!" He kicked aside a kneeling figure that blocked his path and stepped up to the altar; his broken sword was still in his hand and, although scarcely the weapon it once was, it could still cut. It should, he thought, be adequate for dealing with this bunch.

The priest backed away, but the dirk remained in his hand.

Garth drew his own dagger, which was now longer than his sword, and also longer than the priest's blade, having been made for an overman rather than a mere human. He saw that the sacrificial victim was tied to the altar and cut away the ropes.

Immediately she rolled off the altar, sprang up, and started toward the door; Garth caught her before she had gone more than a single step, dropping the stump of his sword but keeping the dagger ready in case a priest or worshipper should attack. His hand gripped her arm, none too gently, as he said, "Wait. You go with me." She winced, and nodded.

The wailing had ceased altogether; the worshippers knelt in shocked silence. The man who held the dirk, presumably the high priest, cried out, "Blasphemer! The girl is our sacrifice!"

Garth grinned broadly. "No longer, priest." It occurred to him that, had he come at a different time, he might have found something entirely different on the altar, something more to the Forgotten King's liking, and added, "I was sent to fetch what lay upon this stone."

He was actually quite pleased he had arrived when he did; the girl was obviously an unwilling victim.

"You have made a mistake! She is nothing but a sacrifice!"

"What else was upon your altar?"

"Who sent you? Some wizard?"

"I come from the temple of Aghad." Garth was perfectly willing to stir up discord as long as it was directed properly, and in fact he spoke the literal truth.

"What do they want with our ceremonial weapons?"

"No one said anything about any weapons."

"There is no need for subterfuge; you came for the whip and dagger. What..." The priest's question was cut off abruptly as Garth, releasing the girl, leapt over the altar and grabbed the man by the throat.

"Priest, you talk too much. Give me the dagger." Garth marveled at the man's stupidity; it had been remarkably cooperative of him to reveal so quickly what was ordinarily kept on the altar.

The priest made a desperate and futile stab at Garth's side with the dirk; it was turned by the overman's mail. Garth's own dagger was not turned. He ran it through the priest's wrist, and the fingers sprang open. The dirk clattered to the floor.

The priest who held the whip suddenly came to life; like everyone else in the temple, he had been watching motionlessly, too confused and surprised to do anything about this intrusion, but now he lunged forward and came up holding the dropped dagger.

He stabbed at Garth; the thrust was parried, and the man retreated. Meanwhile, the high priest struggled in Garth's unbreakable grip. His hands clutched at Garth's arm, impeding his movement as his fellow made another thrust, and the dirk missed Garth by mere inches. Annoyed, Garth flung the high priest aside; he struck the wall at the feet of his idol, fell limply to the floor, and lay still. With one disposed of, Garth turned to face the other, who had assumed a proper knife-fighting stance despite his hampering robe.

The third priest leapt upon Garth from behind and swung a loop of rope around his neck.

To the priests, this seemed to give them an advantage; to the overman, it was a petty annoyance. Keeping his dagger in his left hand, he reached up with his right, and closed it on the would-be strangler's throat. As the man tried to pull his rope taut, Garth's grip tightened, digging in with both the thumbs on his right hand.

He misjudged the strength of the man's neck; there was a loud crack, and the priest tumbled from his back, eyes already glazing over. As he fell, his head struck the edge of the granite altar with another, similar crack of breaking bone. There could be no doubt that he was dead.

The remaining priest froze; he was facing the wall of flares, so that the lower half of his face was visible despite his overhanging cowl, and as Garth watched his mouth fell open and the blood drained from his jaw. The dagger and whip dropped from shaking fingers.

"Girl! Get them!" Garth's voice was sharp, and the girl hastened to obey; she had been watching the fight, and any thought of failing to cooperate with her saviour-or new captor; she was as yet unsure which Garth actually was-had vanished. She hurried around the end of the altar, ignoring the effect of the rough floor on her bare feet, and snatched up the weapons. The lone conscious priest stepped back out of her way without protest.