Time was of indeterminable importance. Knowing that he might have only minutes to live, Samlor began following some of the series of reliefs. One group of carvings made clear the unguessed unity between the 'sorcerer' Hast-ra-kodi and the 'goddess' Dyareela. Samlor stared at the conclusion of the pattern, swallowing hard but not speaking. He was unutterably glad he had not donned either suit of mail when he might have done so.
The panels reeked of bloodshed and repression. Kings and priests had stamped out the worship of Dyareela a hundred times in a hundred places. The rites had festered in the darkness, then burst out again - cancers metastasizing from the black lump here in the vaults beneath Sanctuary. A shrine in the wasteland before it was a city; and even as a city, a brawling, stinking, leaderless hive where no one looked too hard for Evil's heart since Evil's limbs enveloped all.
Alar hil Aspar - a brash outsider, a reformer flushed with his triumph over brigandage - had at last razed the fane of Dyareela here. Instead of salt, he had sown the ruins with a temple to Heqt, the goddess of his upbringing. Fool that he was. Alar had thought that ended it.
Just above the archway, set off from the courses around it by a border of ivy leaves, was a cameo that caught Samlor's eye as he returned sick and exhausted by what he had been looking at. A file of women led by a piper cavorted through the halls of a palace. The women carried small animals and icons of obviously more than symbolic significance, but it was to the piper's features that Samlor's gaze was drawn. The Cirdonian swore mildly and reached up to touch the stone. It was smooth and cold to his fingertips.
So much fit. Enough, perhaps.
Samlor stepped through the double-hung doors closing the archway. The crossbowman waiting beyond with his eyes on the staircase screamed and spun around. The patterned screen that would have concealed the ambush from someone descending the stairs was open to the archway - but judging from the bowman's panic, the mere sight of something approaching from the sanctuary would probably have flushed him anyway.
Samlor had survived too many attacks ever to be wholly unprepared for another. He lunged forwards, shouting to further disconcert the bowman. The screen was toppling as the bowman jerked back from the fingers of Samlor's left hand thrusting for his eyes. The bowstring slapped and the quarrel spalled chips from the archway before ricocheting sideways through a swinging door-panel. Samlor, sprawled across his attacker's lower legs, slashed at the other's face with the knife he had finally cleared. The bowman cried out again and parried with the stock of his own weapon. Samlor's edge thudded into the wood like an axe in a firelog. Three of the bowman's fingers flew out into the room.
Unaware of his maiming, the bowman tried to club Samlor with his weapon. It slipped away from him. He saw the blood-spouting stumps of his left hand, the index finger itself half severed. Fright had made the bowman scream; mutilation now choked his voice with a rush of vomit.
Samlor squirmed forwards, pinning his attacker's torso with his own. He wrestled the crossbow out of the unresisting right hand. There was a pouch of iron quarrels at the bowman's belt, but Samlor ignored them: they were on the left side and no longer a threat. The gagging man wore the scarlet and gold livery of Regli's household.
The Cirdonian glanced quickly around the room, seeing nothing but a helical staircase reaching towards more lighted panels a hundred feet above. He waggled his knife a foot from his captive's eyes, then brought the point of it down on the other's nose. 'You tried to kill me,' he said softly. 'Tell me why or you're missing more than some fingers only.'
'Sabellia, Sabellia,' the maimed retainer moaned. 'You've ruined me now, you bastard.'
Samlor flicked his blade sideways, knowing that the droplet of blood that sprang out would force the other's eyes to cross on it. They would fill with its red proximity. 'Talk to me, little man,' the caravan-master said. 'Why are you here?'
The injured man swallowed bile. 'My lord Regli,' he said, closing his eyes to avoid the blood and the dagger point. 'He said you'd killed his wife. He sent us all after you.'
Samlor laid the dagger point on the other's left eyesocket. 'How many?' he demanded.
'A dozen,' gabbled the other. 'All the guards and us coachmen besides.'
'The Watch?'
'Oh, gods, get that away from my eye,' the retainer moaned. 'I almost shook-' Samlor raised the blade an inch. 'Not the Watch,' the other went on. 'My lord wants to handle this himself for the, the scandal.'
'And where are the others?' the point dipped, brushed an eyelash, and rose again harmlessly.
The wounded man was rigid. He breathed through his mouth, quick gasps as if a lungful of air would preserve him in the moment the knife-edge sawed through his windpipe. 'They all thought you'd run for Cirdon,' he whispered. 'You'd left your cloak behind. I slipped it away, took it to a S'danzo I know. She's a liar like all of them, but sometimes not... I told her I'd pay her for the truth of where I'd find you, and I'd pay her for nothing; but I'd take a lie out other hide if six of my friends had to hold down her blacksmith buddy. She, she described where I'd meet you. I recognized it, I'd taken the Lady Samlane-'
'Here?' Samlor's voice and his knife both trembled. Death slid closer to the room than it had been since the first slash and scramble of the fight.
'Lord, lord,' the captive pleaded. 'Only this far. I swear by my mother's bones!'
'Go on, then.' The knife did not move.
The other man swallowed. 'That's all. I waited here - I didn't tell anybody. Lord Regli put a thousand royals on your head... and... and the S'danzo said I'd live through the meeting. Oh gods, the slut, the slut...'
Samlor smiled. 'She hasn't lied to you yet,' he said. The smile was gone, replaced with a bleakness as cruel as the face of a glacier. 'Listen,' he went on, rising to one knee and pinning his prisoner by psychological dominance in the stead of his body weight. 'My sister asked me for a knife. I told her I'd leave her one if she gave me a reason to.'
A spasm wracked the Cirdonian's face. His prisoner winced at the trembling of the dagger point. 'She said the child wasn't Regli's,' Samlor went on. 'Well, who ever thought it would be, the way she sniffed around? But she said a demon had got it on her ... and that bothered even her at the last. Being used, she said. Being used. She'd tried to have it aborted after she thought about things for a while, but a priest of Heqt was waiting with Regli in the shop where she'd gone to buy the drugs. After that, she wasn't without somebody watching her, asleep or awake. The Temple of Heqt wanted the child born. Samlane said she'd use the knife to end the child when they pulled it from her ... and I believed that, though I knew she'd be in no shape for knifings just after she'd whelped.
'Seems she knew that too, but she was more determined than even I'd have given her credit for being. She could give a lot of folks points for stubborn, my sister.'
Samlor shook himself, then gripped a handful of the captive's tunic. He ripped the garment with his knife. 'What are you doing?' the retainer asked in concern.
'Tying you up. Somebody'11 find you here in time. I'm going to do what I came here for, and when it's done I'll leave Sanctuary. If I've got that option still.'