WEARING A LONG, HOODED CLOAK THAT HE HAD BARTERED FROM a peasant for his helmet and body armor, former private Sallakar pushed his handcart into the city’s Central Square and selected a spot for himself in one of the normally busy corners of the market area, between a plating-salt vendor’s stall and a wheelskin dealer. The square, however, was quiet for this time of late-bright, and many of the merchants had already closed down. Never mind, Sallakar thought—all the more business for those like himself who were still on the street to trade. And besides, his reason for hurrying to arrive ahead of the main body of the army was to enjoy a few hours of profitable monopoly before the competition appeared and drove down the prices. He threw back the cover of the cart to reveal a collection of rock and ice fragments, pieces of parachute silk, burned-out firework cannisters, and other oddments, and unfurled a sign which read:
GENUINE MERACASINE HOLY RELICS
GET YOUR ENLIGHTENER MIRACLE SOUVENIR HERE
“Genuine relics, direct from the scene of the Meracasine miracles,” he shouted. “Here is a rock that was melted by the Enlightener’s thunderbolts—only five duodecs. Own your own miracle rock. Miraculously preserved cuttings of discarded angels’ wings, guaranteed to keep demons from the house—seven duodecs. Angel-light pots, complete with sacred inscriptions; lengths of holy cords; pieces of heavenly flying-vestments; stones from the sermon hill, and lots more. Every item guaranteed to have been brought direct from the scene of the Enlightener’s coming.”
A small group of unkempt, rough-looking idlers had stopped in front of the cart and was watching him curiously. Behind them a few people were looking on, apparently apprehensively, but most were continuing on their way, their eyes fixed solidly in front of them, or turning their backs to hurry away. Sallakar frowned. This wasn’t at all the kind of reception that he’d anticipated. “Come on then, how about you, sir?” he said to the nearest of the ruffians in front of him—an ugly-looking character with a lot of unsmoothed, red-tinted facial plating, a soiled and torn jerkin, and a navigator’s hat pushed jauntily to the back of his head. “A special price for this one only—three duodecs for this piece of Meracasine rock. An excellent talisman and warder-away of evil influences, oh yes. Brings good luck and protects your health. Do I hear an offer?”
“You’re outta your mind,” the sailor commented sourly.
“What are you trying to do—get yourself fizzed too?” one of the others asked.
“Better lay off that kind of talk and just be grateful there aren’t any guards within earshot,” another advised.
Sallakar gave them a puzzled look. “Didn’t he show up here, then?” he asked them. “The whole city was supposed to have been converted by now.”
“Who?” the sailor asked.
“The Enlightener. He was supposed to come here and call miracles down from the sky.”
One of the band laughed. “Oh, he showed up all right, but the miracles didn’t. The priests will be throwing him off the cliff before bright’s end. Where else d’you think everybody’s going?”
“Convicted as a blasphemer,” another one said.
“And he might not be the only one, from the way you’re carrying on,” a third commented. “But don’t mind us—you go ahead. Two fizzings for the price of one would really make the day.”
“And we’d better be on our way,” the sailor said to the others. “Or we’ll miss even the one.”
Sallakar watched them walk away muttering and laughing among themselves, then turned round and hastily took down his sign and pulled the cover back over his cart. He stood thinking hard for a while and frowning perplexedly to himself. Then all of a sudden a glint came into his eyes. He took a piece of marking stick from inside his robe,
turned the sign over, and slowly and deliberately wrote on the back in large letters:
BLASPHEMER SOUVENIRS AND RELICS
BROUGHT BACK BY THE ARMY HE TRIED TO CORRUPT
GET YOUR EXECUTION MEMENTO HERE
Nodding in satisfaction, he rolled the sign up again, tucked it beneath the cover, then grasped the handles of his cart and moved away to join the general drift of the crowd toward the southern outskirts of the city.
In a dungeon in the lowermost levels of the prison behind the Palace of the High Holy One, Groork sat on his rough bed of mill-swarf and lathe-turnings, staring forlornly at the bare ice floor. The nightmare, he had at last accepted fully and finally, was really happening. After dedicating his life unswervingly to upholding the Lifemaker’s faith, denouncing its enemies, and taking scrupulous care never to permit an utterance that might be taken as contradicting the Church’s teachings or denying its doctrines, this was the bitter end to which it had all brought him—convicted and condemned to die the death of a heretic and blasphemer.
The injustice of his reward for ceaseless vigilance and untiring devotion was causing him to question seriously the whole foundation of his belief system for the first time ever. He had believed, and he had trusted; he had remained faithful in the face of adversity; he had never wavered. And now Frennelech, the High Holy One whom he had served selflessly as the Lifemaker’s true worldly personification, had become the very instrument by which that service was repaid with betrayal and callousness. How, then, could such a Holy One personify an all-wise and all-knowing spirit, or be representative of such a being in any way whatever? Certainly in no way that Groork could see. And if he admitted that much doubt, what further credence could he give to any other facet of the whole system of credos and dogmas that was derived from the same suspect premises by means of the same dubious processes? None, obviously. But it was inconceivable that the Lifemaker’s chosen method for communicating true knowledge could include suspect or dubious elements. Therefore it seemed to follow on principle that the Lifemaker’s chosen method for making true knowledge available couldn’t depend on inspired interpretations of sacred revelation by self-proclaimed diviners.
The mental processes that had brought Groork to these conclusions seemed uncomfortably like the methods of reason by which Thirg hypothesized and evaluated possible answers to his questions—a practice that Groork had always denounced as sinful. When Groork applied this newfound skepticism to the question of the Wearer and the angels, he found only two possible answers to explain their failure to materialize over Pergassos: Either they had been unable to, or they had chosen not to. If they had been unable to, then their powers were not infinite, and they could not have been sent by the Lifemaker; if they had chosen not to, then they had lied, and that alone was enough to force the same conclusion. Groork felt the first possibility to be the more likely since the philosophy of living that the Wearer had expounded would surely have been irreconcilable with any form of moral deficiency, but either way it meant that the angels hadn’t come from any supernatural realm. Since they were clearly not of the known world, they could only be from some other, unknown one—a world where, admittedly, arts and skills that were perhaps not mistakenly described as miraculous seemed to be commonplace—which could exist only above the sky. So again one of Thirg’s long-standing insistences and convictions appeared to have been vindicated. And if that were so, was not Groork obliged to concede also that the arts and skills that the angels exhibited were not the results of any magical abilities at all, but simply the consequences of applying knowledge gained by the universally accessible, comprehensible, nonmysterious methods of inquiry that Thirg had always propounded? He regretted particularly that he would not see Thirg again; he saw the world so differently now, and there would have been so much for them to talk about.
The muffled tramp of heavy footfalls penetrated from outside. They stopped just beyond the dungeon door. Groork could feel his coolant recirculator pounding, and a sudden tightness wrenched his insides. He rose to his feet as the heavy, organic-fibroid door curled itself aside, and the jailer entered, accompanied by a guard captain, two priests, Vormozel, the prison governor, and Poskattyn, Frennelech’s Judicial Chancellor from the Holy Palace. An escort of Palace Guards remained outside in the passageway.
Poskattyn produced a scroll and read, “Groork, of the city of Pergassos, thou hast been tried and found guilty of the crimes of heresy, blasphemy, and high treason against the State, and sentenced to suffer death in the manner prescribed by ecclesiastical law. Hast thou any final words to speak before thou art taken to the place of execution?” Groork could only shake his head numbly, “Hast thou prepared thyself and made thy peace with the Lifemaker, may He have mercy on thy soul?” Groork made no reply. Poskattyn rerolled his scroll, stepped back, and looked at Vormozel. “Proceed, Governor.” Vormozel nodded to the guard captain, and Groork was led into the passageway and placed between the two priests, with the captain in front, the governor and chancellor behind, and the guards forming a file on either side with torch-bearers at front and rear. Their footsteps echoed hollowly from the gaunt walls as the procession walked slowly toward the damp stone stairs at the far end of the passageway. Faces appeared and watched grimly from the windows of some of the other cell doors along the way, but none of them made a sound.
Groork’s impressions were confused and fragmented—of drab, torchlit stairs; massive doors being opened and gratings being raised; and the priests on either side of him chanting monotonously as they ascended to ground level and came out into the prison yard. There a legged wagon pulled by two black-draped, wheeled tractors was waiting before a cordon of guards, while several carriages full of dignitaries were lined up with a mounted escort just inside the main gate. Still dazed, Groork climbed up into the wagon with the priests, the chancellor, two of the guards, and the guard captain, while the rest of the detail and the governor watched from behind. The cart moved away to form up with the other vehicles and the riders, the gates were opened, and the cavalcade emerged to be greeted by the roars of the crowd that had been waiting outside.
Past the Courts of the High Council they went, across Penitents’ Square, and over the Bridge of Eskenderom-the-Elder to the Thieves’ Quarter on the south side of the city, while the crowd closed and surged behind. Groork gripped the handrail in front of him and took in his last glimpses of the city he had lived in for most of his life. He was bewildered and unable to understand what he had done that could suddenly turn fellow citizens and old schoolfriends into a crazed mob whose only interest was to see him die. For the first time he saw the reality of the savage mindlessness that could be engendered in a people who had been conditioned to believe without questioning, to accept without understanding, and to hate upon command. He remembered the few times he had glimpsed the calm, dignified bearing of the citizens of Menassim, and in that moment he understood how the tolerance and wisdom of Kleippur’s realm were products of the philosophy that Thirg stood for as inevitably as the ignorance and brutality seen in Kroaxia were of the repression that he himself, until so very recently, had helped to perpetuate. Indeed his conversion had come late, he reflected sadly.
The city’s buildings fell behind, and now he could see the Cliff of Judgment looming ahead, above the Spectators’ Hill, its face black and menacing against a setting of broken crags behind, sullen gray mountains in the more distant background, and unsettled storm clouds overhead. The grim procession followed the road around the hill, and on the far side the terraces facing the cliff were crowded to capacity, with many more figures standing on the open ground above. On a rock platform at the base of the cliff, the huge vat of acid fumed white wispy vapors and bubbled in cackling anticipation. Groork found himself trembling suddenly. He looked up, and high above, on the ledge at the top of the long, tapering stairway, he could see the scarlet-robed figures of High Council priests grouped before an unmoving line of Palace Guards, and in front of them all, dressed completely in black and hooded, the Executioner, standing with arms folded while he gazed impassively down over the scene below.
Both the King and the High Priest were present with their respective retinues in the raised, canopied enclosure occupying the center at the bottom of the amphitheater. Groork and those with him descended from the wagon and stood in front of the enclosure while the spokesmen of the Head of State and of the Head of Church delivered formal addresses. Groork was too petrified by the scene and the mood of the waiting crowd to hear the words. Had he really caused such turmoil that the nation’s two most powerful holders of office should take such personal interest in the proceedings? Apparently so, but Groork couldn’t think why. He was incapable of thinking anything anymore. Everything was disintegrating into a jumble of disconnected and incoherent sights and sounds, colors and noises, words and faces. What was the point in trying to understand any of it now? What difference would it make? A few minutes more, and nothing would make any difference to anything ever again. He thought of his brother, he thought of their parents, and he tried to compose a prayer to the Lifemaker. And then he realized that the group was moving again and had begun to ascend the broad steps below the stairway that led to the ledge high above. He could hear the crowd growing noisier and sense its rising excitement.
In the dignitaries’ enclosure, Eskenderom was watching Frennelech intently from a distance. “Indeed, if this Enlightener is a product of the High Priest’s working in league with the aliens to hinder my expansion, then Frennelech is displaying a most remarkable composure at his impending loss,” he whispered to Mormorel. “I am tempted to conclude that the architect of the machinations whose consequences it has been our misfortune to suffer was none less than Kleippur as we suspected.”
“I too,” Mormorel replied. “And now Kleippur shall learn of the fate that awaits those who allow themselves to be enticed into conspiracy with alien criminals.”
“Thus has the Lumian king chosen to demonstrate the folly of opposing his rule,” Eskenderom said. “An illuminating lesson, the study of which will not be restricted to Kleippur, I trust, or confined within merely the boundaries of Carthogia.”
“The news will be repeated rapidly far and wide,” Mormorel assured him. “All nations shall know that the powers of the gods have aligned themselves with thee.”
Groork’s universe had narrowed to the silver-shod heels of the guards ascending the steps ahead of him and the incessant chanting of the priests on either side. He had lost all estimate of how high they had climbed or how far was still to go. He didn’t dare look up. Endless steps; endless steps; endless steps...
“The King’s disposition seems strangely agreeable if this Enlightener was indeed his chosen replacement for you,” Jaskillion murmured in Frennelech’s ear. “I must confess my expectation was that Eskenderom would intervene to protect his protege when I heard of his return posthaste from Gornod.”
“A protege who has exhausted his potential usefulness,” Frennelech replied. “And what surer way could Eskenderom find than this to conceal all trace of his involvement in the plot so recently frustrated and, at the same time, eliminate all risk of embarrassing indiscretions and exposures in the future? The smugness so evident upon the royal visage is not as deeply seated as it appears, I feel, for it was against Eskenderom’s plan that the Lumians elected to direct their magic, not ours. If these aliens are indeed the god of which the Scribings speak, then I think we can feel safe in claiming that He is with us.”
Groork and his escorts had reached the ledge. A line of trumpeters along the rear wall blasted a fanfare, and then everyone stood silently for what seemed an eternity while more speeches were delivered inaudibly far below—deliberately intended, Groork was certain, to prolong his anguish. A hush fell, and the Executioner advanced onto the narrow, tapering platform that projected outward from the ledge and held up a full-size effigy of a robeing. It was customary to commence the proceedings with a dummy to test the quality of the acids; it also added to the victims’ terror and therefore helped excite the crowd. An expectant stillness descended over the sea of upturned faces on the hill opposite. Very slowly, the Executioner pushed the dummy forward to the edge of the platform, held it steady for a few seconds, and then allowed it to tumble forward into space. A thunderous roar came up from the spectators and sustained itself for a long time. From where Groork was standing, he was unable to see what happened. But he didn’t have to; he’d seen executions before. After the dummy, a succession of sacrificial animals was led forward and dispatched, one by one, from the platform. With each the crowd grew wilder.
And then the last of the animals was gone. Groork stared in horror at the platform, and felt himself freeze. The priests had formed a solid wall immediately behind, and to the rear the line of guards was closing up and moving forward. The Executioner left the platform and removed his long lance from its stand beside an altar bearing fire, while behind Groork the line of priests drew into a semicircle that drove him outward toward the end of the tapering platform. Then he was standing on a tiny island of ice that seemed to float high in the air, nothingness yawned in front of him and on both sides. Groork’s senses reeled. He recoiled instinctively from the drop, but something sharp prodded him in the back. He looked back desperately. The Executioner had leveled his lance, and behind him the stone-faced priests had closed ranks to the very edge of the platform. There was no way back.
Goaded by another jab with the lance, Groork tottered a step forward and for the first time found himself looking straight down the sheer cliff face. Far below, the acid vat was foaming and boiling, with the last of the animals still writhing and convulsing in their death agonies. Groork shook his head wildly in protest. This would serve no purpose. It would achieve nothing. There was no point, no reason. If he was going to die, he pleaded inwardly, let it not be for no reason. “No!” he shouted. “This is not the Lifemaker’s will. This is savagery! This—“
“Know all ye here that in this way shall all heretics and blasphemers perish!” the Executioner shouted, and lunged hard with the lance. The landscape wheeled around him as Groork pitched forward into emptiness. Brilliant violet lights flared in the sky above, but Groork didn’t see them. A roar of voices rose to meet him. He felt himself scream, but couldn’t hear. Land and sky spun together.
And in the same instant, something pointed and streamlined swooped down from the clouds above the clifftop.
“Four-zero-zero on vertical boost. Gimme more flaps!”
“That’s one through four at full. Take it down! Take it down!”
“Harder to starboard! Faster with that line, Joe!”
“It’s at max now.”
“You’ve got it. Easy, easy! Coming round fine. Hold that turn, Clarissa. Hold that turn!”
As the flyer dived out of the blackness and banked into the full glare of the light from the flares, the net trailing on a line from its rear portside door swung out in a wide arc and scooped the tumbling figure of Moses from the air. The tangle of robot and net dipped low to swing past the base of the cliff, rose again like a pendulum, and then swung back in a wide, rising curve as the flyer began to lift again. The return trajectory carried back up to the ledge, where robots were running to and fro in confusion and waving things in the air, with a few—presumably the radiosensitive types that Dave Crookes had speculated about—writhing around on the floor under the close-range influence of the flyer’s mapping radar. Lower down, visible at the edge of the glow being generated by the flares, the hillside opposite the cliff seemed to be alive with deranged figures waving, running hither and thither, and throwing themselves to the ground in all manner of agitation and commotion.
Then the swinging net caught on a construction of steel girders standing at one end of the ledge, and the line tightened. Joe Fellburg, who was with Drew West in the flyer’s opened aft compartment—both of them suited up, as were all the flyer’s occupants—crashed the winding mechanism into neutral, and the power winch whined in protest as it was jerked abruptly into reverse. “We’re caught!” Fellburg yelled. “Level out and slacken it off for chrissakes!”
“Back it off, Clarissa!” West shouted, and Clarissa slammed into reverse thrust, throwing everyone violently forward against their restraining harnesses. The line went taut, yanking the winch off its mounting and trapping the line in a mess of crushed supports, buckled floorplates, and a seized winding drum. “The winch is wrecked!” Fellburg shouted. “Everything’s screwed up!”
In the copilot’s seat, Abaquaan increased vertical boost to provide lift while Clarissa slowed frantically and banked into a tight turn to take the strain off the line. “Christ, those missiles!” Abaquaan yelled. “We can’t hang around here. You’ll have to cut the line.”
Zambendorf fought his way uphill across the tilted floor and pulled himself into the aft compartment. “We can’t give up now,” he bellowed. “We’ve got him. Drew, give me the end of that auxiliary line and then reel me out. I’m going down there to attach a magnetic grab.”
“You can’t go down there, Karl,” Fellburg protested.
“There isn’t time to argue. Give me that line.”
Fellburg clipped the auxiliary line to Zambendorf’s harness, then took a rigger’s tool belt from the doorway locker and attached it over his own suit. “You’re crazy, but you’ll still need some help,” he said. “I’m coming too.”
“Get right above the net and steady up, Clarissa,” West called over the intercom. “Karl and Joe are going down with a magnet.”
Below, the Kroaxian crowd was in pandemonium. All had seen the miracle of the heavenly beast descending to preserve the Enlightener as the Cliff of Judgment delivered its verdict, and the false priests who had condemned him being smitten to the ground by the Lifemaker’s wrath. Once before had the Enlightener preached the true Word to the people in the marketplace, and the people had ridiculed him; but such was his wisdom and forebearance that in place of anger or retribution, he had chosen this way to open their eyes to the light, and to demonstrate the powerlessness of the priests before him. This time the people would listen and be grateful for the mercy that had been shown them.
“Indeed the Enlightener teaches the true Word of the Lifemaker!” they cried. “We shall not kill. We shall not enslave. We shall not be enslaved.”
“Down with the false priests who teach hatred!”
“Down with the King and his ministers who wage war!”
The roaring of the voices was swollen even louder as the first contingent of the returning Kroaxian army came round the hill and joined in.
“We have returned to unseat the tyrant! We shall not kill!”
“All Carthogians are our brothers!”
“See, the Enlightener awaits us and has converted the citizens of Pergassos as he promised! Praise the Enlightener!”
The citizens howled louder, and the crowd began closing in around the dignitaries’ enclosure.
“Our soldiers have returned from the Meracasine. Indeed has the Enlightener spoken truly!”
“Out with Eskenderom!”
“Out with Frennelech!”
“No more shall we cringe beneath the heels of tyrants!”
“No more shall we tremble at the words of charlatans!”
“Out with them! Out with them!”
In the canopied enclosure, all was chaos as priests and courtiers, officials and dignitaries, counselors and ministers dashed backward, forward, and in circles shouting for guards to close ranks and for servants to fetch mounts. In the middle of the panic, Eskenderom and Frennelech collided. “Traitor!” Eskenderom screamed into the High Priest’s face. “Thou holy vermin! Sump sludge! What bargain didst thou conclude with thy aliens that they should cheat me thus?”
“I?” Frennelech howled, outraged. “I? -- thou royal emetic! Thou pox-blistered discharge vent! It is through thy contract with the sky-devils that they have defrauded met”
“What sayest thou? Is this spectacle not thy final triumph that shall take away my crown and remove me from my realm?”
“Nay. What gibberish dost thou prattle? Is it not the fruitful consummation of thy design to promote this imposter, thy creation, before the people and thence to subordinate to royal command all authority hitherto invested in my office?”
Eskenderom shook his head. “Would I, by my orders to my handpicked agent, command the disintegration of my own army? What kind of priest’s babbling is this?”
Eskenderom stared at Frennelech; Frennelech stared at Eskenderom. Both arrived at the same conclusion at the same instant.
“Zounds! Egad! Forsooth!” Eskenderom shrieked. “I see it now—the aliens have outwitted us both! We have been betrayed!” He raised his fists high in the air. “Arghh! The leaching-tank scum! The drain-filter dregs! I’ll have at them! I’ll smear their jelly bodies across the valley of Gornod. Mormorel, rally the guard and let us ride now to the camp of the alien deceivers. All who value honor and dignity, follow me! And if we be blasted to rivets and strewn across the deserts, then at least it will be said that we were dismantled gloriously. To Gornod!”
“Have the equerry fetch the mounts,” Frennelech called to Jaskillion. “Muster the Palace Guard and tell them we will ride with the King to the valley of Gornod to avenge this alien treachery. If the nation of Kroaxia is to be rent asunder by outworlders’ stratagem, its final episode of glory shall not be Eskenderom’s alone. To Gornod!”
Then the voices of the crowd rose to a crescendo. “Angels! See, angels are descending! Shining angels descend from the heavens!”
Above, two figures were lowering toward the Enlightener, who had returned to the execution ledge after casting himself forth and allowing his fall to be miraculously intercepted, and was now giving thanks at the sacred tree opposite the top of the stairway. The creature from heaven was watching down over them protectively, and at the far end of the ledge, the guard commander seemed to be trying to reorganize his cringing soldiers.
“How is he?” Zambendorf barked, struggling to maintain equilibrium on the wildly swinging line. The Taloids on the ledge had scattered from the falling cable when Drew West cut the line to the net from above, and seemed to be keeping their distance.
“Can’t tell,” Fellburg answered. “He seems out of it. The net’s all caught up in this junk. We’ll have to cut him out.”
Zambendorf worked frantically to draw in the magnetic clamp on another line while Fellburg hacked into the net with a pair of long-handled cutters. “What’s the score?” West’s voice said over the intercom from the flyer.
“All a mess—Joe’s cutting Moses out,” Zambendorf answered breathlessly. “Is the generator hooked up yet, Drew?”
“Ready when you are.”
“Hurry it up down there,” Abaquaan’s voice said on the circuit.
“Watch out behind you,” Clarissa warned.
Zambendorf looked round and saw that some of the Taloids seemed to have recovered and were coming across the ledge, brandishing objects that looked like weapons. “Get a move on, Joe,” he shouted, and braced himself against the girders with his legs and one arm while helping to pull pieces of netting away with the other.
“That’s it,” Fellburg called.
“Hit the switch, Drew!” Zambendorf shouted. “Clarissa, take it up! Take it up!” Current flowed through the cable, and the flyer rose to take up the slack. At the same time Zambendorf and Fellburg were lifted away as West began to haul in the lines. Just as Moses swung clear of the girders, the other Taloids rushed forward and were instantly caught by the magnetic field to form a daisy-chain of six or seven figures joined head-to-toe, head-to-toe in a string extending to the ground. They hung convulsing helplessly as the field passing through their skins played havoc with their internal circuitry.
“Oh shit,” Fellburg moaned miserably.
“Hold it, hold it!” Zambendorf shouted in his helmet, “They’re stuck.”
“I can’t cut the current,” West called down. “We’d lose Moses. Jeez, what a screw-up!”
“Let us down again. Drew, about ten feet,” Zambendorf ordered. “Joe, we’ll have to grab him and hope we can hold on.”
They came back down, and a few seconds later Fellburg’s voice said, “I’ve got one arm. Are you okay there on the other side, Karl?”
“Okay,” Zambendorf yelled. “We’ve got him! Cut it now, Drew.” West threw a switch to deactivate the magnet, and the chain of Taloids fell apart into bodies dropping all over the ledge among their terrified colleagues.
“We’ve got him!” Fellburg shouted. “Clarissa, let’s get the hell outta here.” As the flyer at last lifted away, a wrench that had almost been dislodged from a loop in Fellburg’s tool belt fell away into the darkness beneath.
Far below, the crowd had seen the High Priest’s Palace Guards snatched up into the air and scattered like playthings, and the Enlightener being borne away triumphantly by the angels. As he departed to join the Lifemaker, he sent something tumbling down to the multitude gathered at the bottom of the cliff. Figures rushed forward frenziedly to pick up the sacred symbol and hold it high for all the faithful to see. “A sign! A sign! We have been given a sign! Behold the form that has been given us to mark the Day of Miracles!”
“Behold the sign! Behold the sign!”
“We are saved! We are saved!”
From one side of the dignitaries’ enclosure, most of which had by now been overrun, a ragged body of riders comprising the King, the High Priest, and a couple of hundred or so of their loyal followers and guards broke through the crowd and departed at full gallop amid jeers, catcalls, and a barrage of rocks and assorted other missiles.
Meanwhile, high above the craggy ridge rising behind the cliff, the flyer came out of the top of the cloudbank and streaked for the safety of the distant mountains.