They reached the base of the promontory, a triangular finger of rock jutting into the sea. The land rose precipitously to a wall of boulders. Blade studied the stone barricade for a moment; it might be an accidental, a natural, configuration, but be doubted it. Men had built it.

Juna hung back. She shivered and pulled her cloak closer against the dank mist. «I do not like this place.»

Blade pushed her up on the slope. «To get back-if your messenger did not go he may still be here. We'll have a look.»

She stumbled over a rock and Blade caught her. For a moment they were close, her unbound breasts touching his massive chest. She disengaged herself, not meeting his eyes, but her breath quickened and a fine tremor ran through her.

«You are mad,» she said. «Why would Tudd, my messenger, come to this place?»

He helped her over a rock stile. «I am guessing, of course. But he must have had a boat of some kind, and he would need to conceal it. He could not do that on an open beach. This is the only place for miles in which anything could be hidden. It will do no harm to look. Just as old Kron did.»

She shook her head. «I do not believe that Kron was here.»

«I do. I think she was here and found something and wanted to tell me about it. Being a future-sayer, of course, she had to pretend that she had it from the lyre stones.»

Juna halted for a moment to catch her breath. The slope was steeper just before the wall and littered with jagged slabs of glassy black stone. She gathered the cloak over her heaving breasts and looked at Blade with a mingle of awe and anger. «I am right to fear you. You hold nothing sacred. You mock and scoff at everything.»

Blade stared at her. «Not everything,» he said quietly. For a moment their eyes met and Blade felt himself lost in those luminous depths, those gray-violet pools. He desired her. He meant to have her. He longed to be kind and yet knew that he must be stern. She was an unknown quantity to him, just as he was to her. The only thing they had in common was their flesh. And she was, he reminded himself reluctantly, little better than a temple whore. He did not like thinking about that.

He extended a hand to her. «Come on. A little more and we'll be on the wall. This eunuch of yours, Tudd, must have had a boat and I expect to find it. Unless he swam the thirty miles to Patmos and back, which I doubt.»

They reached the wall. Smaller rocks had been arranged in stairsteps and a moment later they gained the top. Blade smiled as he pointed down to what appeared to be a small volcanic crater.

«You see! You never know what you'll find until you go looking.»

He watched her closely. By her expression she was as surprised as he was. More, because he had expected something.

The miniature temple appeared to be floating in the mist. It stood at the bottom of the crater, on a broad plinth of glossy stone, open on all four sides, with three slender fluted columns facingin each direction. The roof was pyramidal and open at the top.

Juna shivered and moved closer to him. He put an arm about her slender waist and she did not object. There was a brooding beauty, an aesthetic perfection, about the little temple floating in its sea of dank white mist, and there was also an evil about it. Blade felt it also, but when she turned and tried to go back he stopped her.

«Come on!» He guided her down a path of crushed stone. «I think this place has something to tell us. Let's find. it.»

«Oh-Oh-no-no-«

She spun about and buried her face in his chest. He held her and gazed over her shoulder at the body.

It' lay just where the path ended at the temple plinth. The body of a man, dismembered and with each quarter indicating a cardinal point of the compass. The severed head was in the middle.

Juna clung to Blade and sobbed, holding him tightly. He wondered at this. As a goddess she surely must have seen worse. Was this the same girl who had flared so defiantly at the fat Ptol?

He stroked her hair and felt her body sag against his. «Your messenger? The eunuch TWO»

She nodded against his chest. Her hair was a fragrant cloud brushing his face, sparkling with mist gems, and her body was soft and warm and enticing as she moved still closer. Blade wondered at all this, too, but did not question. He was on his guard and in time she would reveal herself. In the meantime he meant to be the gainer.

He held her and looked closer at the body, recalling the old hag's words and smiling. He was right. Kron had been here.

There was sand around the body. Neat killers, they had used sand to blot up the blood. The «house» was the body, of course, and it was now built of bone because crabs had been at it. Some of the arm and thigh bones had been picked bare.

«… you shall find hope and doom. The stones are silent. .»

They had found the doom. Where was the hope?

Juna moved against him. Her lips brushed his face and her breath was sweet. Her tender body was against his from knee to shoulder and he felt a surge of desire in his loins.

Juna whispered. «I have a sudden great longing for you, Richard Blade. I have feared this moment and did not wish it. It was so that I pretended coldness and anger. I am afraid of you, you fill me with terror, and all the while my heart and my body cry out for you. My mind says no-that you are a danger to me-but my body will not listen to wisdom. Let us go from this place, my love.

Quickly. This moment. We will find a bed on the white sands and-«

Blade silenced her with a kiss. Her mouth was hot and wet, her tongue a rasp of flesh invading and inflaming him. Blade kissed her and gazed over her shoulder and wondered. Why the sudden sexual con? What did she know, what had she seen, that he did not know and had not seen? There had to be something. He stared at the dismembered body of the eunuch Tudd. What? Something had frightened her into using her body to lull him. Something she did not want Blade to see.

There it was. Near the stiffened fingers of one hand was an ivory baton. It must have been left in the hand, for someone to find, but the dead fingers had twitched in reflex and dislodged it.

Juna moved her body against him. «Let us go, Blade! I cannot abide this place. And I swoon for you.»

He stroked her hair and caressed her slender throat with his big fingers. He thrust himself against her, let her feel the throbbing hardness of him through her clothing. Her fingers slid down and found him, caressed, and the tempo of her breathing increased. He doubted she was faking it now. The lady, in arousing him, had aroused herself.

«We will go,» he whispered tenderly. «I long for you also, Juna. You are a goddess, though not as they think of you in Thyme. But first there are things to be done. Our bodies, and our love, must wait.»

She pressed harder against°him. Her fingers were busy. «Why? I cannot-I will not wait. I want you now.»

He kissed her again. «Just a question or two,» he soothed. «When did you send Tudd with your message to Patmos?»

She tried to pull her mouth away from his, to look at him, but Blade held her tight. At last she mumbled, «A week gone.»

Blade thought back. That would have made it two days before the Samostans stormed Thyme. He, undreamed of in their state of things, had still been in Home Dimension.

Juna moved her pelvis against his. «Cannot we go?»

«A week ago, Juna? You sent Tudd two days before

Hectoris attacked through the sewers. You knew he would attack, — you knew that the sewers would be opened to him by Ptol-the real reason why Ptol would have you killed is because you knew he was the traitor-and yet you gave no warning to the Thymians. You said nothing to their high command. You stood by while the city died, and you sent a messenger to insure your own safety.»

She tried to struggle away from him, aware too late that he was not fooled. She sought to be the goddess once more. «Lies! How dare you speak to me so? And whywhy speak so now when I was ready, when I was longing so for-«