It was dark inside the ziggurat, and for the first few steps the raiders were quite blind. Reave pulled out his pistols. The other men also had weapons in their hands. Gradually their eyes became accustomed to the gloom. There seemed to be a soft radiance coming from above them. It was the first time Reave could remember seeing Baptiste look hesitant. They were in a large square room. A shaft of sunlight came in behind them, as much of an intruder as they were. As far as Reave could tell, the room was a perfect cube. That was the first problem: The room was too big. There was no way the place could be accommodated by the outside dimensions of the structure. It was a physical impossibility. If anything, it should have come to a point that corresponded with the pyramid peak of the ziggurat.
Yar Gracka scanned the room for any lurking threat, 'Shift-space?'
The Old Metal Monster scowled. 'It's a damned reality twist. I hate religions. They always pull shit like this.'
The second problem was the large stone cube that floated in the exact center of the space with no visible means of support. Baptiste slowly paced around it, gazing up with his hands clasped behind his back. In the half-light he had the face of an angry hawk. Hard, crazy eyes were bright above the curved, jutting nose, and thick sensual lips were curled in an expression of total contempt.
'Is this supposed to impress me? Do they think I'm some ignorant native who can be intimidated by party tricks?'
He seemed to take everything about the ziggurat very personally. Reave noticed, though, that Baptiste refrained from actually walking under the floating block of stone. Instead, he shouted furiously into the echoing space.
'So where are you, priests, or whatever you call yourselves?'
He stood and waited, but there was no response of any kind. He interlaced his fingers and flexed his wrists.
'So, priests, you want to play hide-and-seek, do you? I have a much better idea. I'm going outside, and I'm going to hang what's left of your parish, one at a time, until you decide to show yourselves. How do you like that, priests?' He looked at the Old Metal Monster. 'Build a gallows for me, Monster.'
The Old Metal Monster nodded. His expression was grim, but his small pig eyes gleamed at the prospect of a multiple hanging. 'Right away, chief.'
As he turned to walk back through the bronze doors, the burnished surface of his armor was suddenly alive with dancing flashes of purple energy like a plasma discharge or sudden isolated static. Although the flashes did not appear to be causing him any harm, the Old Metal Monster started frantically to try to brush them off as though they were crawling insects.
'Damn this, I'm getting out of here.'
As he stumbled back into the outside light, the flashes vanished as abruptly as they had appeared. The others gathered around him on the steps outside the door.
'Are you all right?'
The Old Metal Monster nodded uncertainly. He looked plenty shaken. 'I guess so.'
'What was that stuff?'
'Some filthy priest trick?'
Baptiste's eyes were hard. 'You all heard what I said in there, so let's get to it.'
A makeshift gallows was hastily erected, and Baptiste personally looked over the prisoners to select the first victim. He picked a thickset man with graying hair who looked to be some kind of town dignitary. As three foot soldiers dragged him out of the depressed mass of surviving townspeople, the man struggled and shouted, begging to be told what he and the other people had ever done to deserve the treatment they were receiving. No answer was forthcoming, and once they had him standing on the tall four-legged stool with the noose around his neck, he seemed to go limp, as though he had resigned himself to death. Baptiste walked forward and, without a word, kicked away the stool. The man dropped less than two feet, and the rope failed to break his neck. He hung twisting and choking with his feet barely inches off the ground. His face slowly turned blue, and a distended tongue protruded from lips that had puffed up to a dark purple.
Baptiste did not even wait for the first man to die before he chose a second sacrifice. This time it was a woman, plump and pink-cheeked, who looked as though she spent her time weeding her vegetable patch or milking her cow. When Baptiste pointed to her, she went white and them exploded into screaming hysteria. She had to be carried to the gallows, and the foot soldiers had trouble getting her to stand on the stool. Her legs seemed incapable of holding her up. The soldiers were about to dispense with the stool and haul her up bodily when a voice came from the top of the ziggurat.
'Stop this madness!'
A single figure had come out of the bronze doors. Baptiste waved to the men who were still trying to string up the choking, shrieking townswoman. 'Wait. Let her down. This looks like our elusive priest.'
The figure was male. It was hard to estimate his age. A fitted bodysuit, spotlessly white, showed that he had a well-developed muscular body, but his face was lined and venerable. A full head of straight white hair that fell to his shoulders was held in place by a thin gold chaplet. Reave suspected that somewhere back up the line the man must have had a longlife treatment. As he walked up to Baptiste and his henchmen, the contrast was scarcely believable. Beside the dirt and scars and stragglingbeards of the raiders, he was dazzling. A couple of soldiers actually took a step back as he came close.
Menlo leaned close to Reave. 'That's what you call an aura.'
Baptiste waited with his hands on his hips. 'So you're the priest of this wretched little town?'
The man in white regarded him calmly. 'I'm not a priest.'
'So what are you?'
'My name is Anaheim, and I'm a metaphysician.'
Baptiste sneered. 'You'll not metaphysic your way out of this, priest.'
'I've already told you that I'm not a priest.'
Baptiste stabbed an angry finger at the ziggurat. 'And what's that thing? Your house? It's a damned temple. You can't lie your way out of that,'
'The structure is an integral part of my work.'
It did not help that Anaheim was over a foot taller than Baptiste. The chief of the raiders puffed out his chest and did everything but stand on tiptoe to be intimidating.
'You've come face to face with Vlad Baptiste, whatever you are. Men call me the Torch, and I am death to all stinking priests.'
Even with the now-still body already hanging on the gallows, Anaheim did not seem at all afraid of Baptiste. All he did was nod, acknowledging what Baptiste had said.
'I can't say that I'm pleased to meet you, Vlad Baptiste. You must be massively insecure to have the need to create such destruction. I can only tell you again that I am not a priest. If anything, I'm a scientist.'
Baptiste's voice was a snake hiss. 'I also hang scientists.'
Metaphysician Anaheim shook his head. 'No, you can't hang me.'
He was not pleading for his life. It was a simple statement of fact. The silence that followed was eerie. Baptiste clearly could not believe what he was hearing.
'I. . can't hang you? I can do anything I like to you. The only limit to what I can do to you is my own imagination!'
Again Anaheim shook his head. 'All you can do to me is force me to do something now that I was planning to leave until later.'
'And what's that?'
'This.' Metaphysician Anaheim closed his eyes.