Stealers' Sky

A demon dived for the jewel, but a golden brown streak beat him to it. Reyk climbed again, clutching the Fire in God's Eye in his razor talons. immediately, the demons forgot Chenaya and Daphne and swept up into the sky after the falcon.

Daphne wiped the sweat from her brow. Blood flowed from a trio of lined cuts on her unarmored left arm. She glanced down from the altar where she stood. "You'd better have a damn good explanation, mistress," she said with her usual mocking lilt on the final word.

Chenaya ran out between a pair of columns to follow Reyk's darting flight. The demons were too close, too swift, and too many for Reyk to avoid very long. She gave a sharp whistle. The raptor folded his wings tightly and plummeted earthward, momentarily leaving the demons behind. Chenaya held out her gloved arm, and Reyk landed, dropping the jewel. Immediately, she sent him up again, set down one of her blades, and grabbed the diamond from the floor.

"I wish you hadn't done that," Daphne muttered, glancing at the charging demons and, briefly, at her sword. Its light was almost gone. Still, she struck fearlessly at the first to come near enough.

Then Dayrne was there, too. Picking up the sword Chenaya had set down, he lashed out, cleaving a demon in midair. "Rashan's ready!" He shouted, shielding his eyes against the unexpected flash. "Go!"

Chenaya threw down her blade and grabbed another from the brazier. Daphne did the same, taking the last of the consecrated weapons. "We all go!" Chenaya called back.

"I don't have a horse!" Daphne cried. "Go on!"

Chenaya ran toward her own mount, clutching sword and jewel. "Ride with Dayrne!" she ordered, throwing herself into the saddle. "If I go down, one of you get this thing to Rashan!"

She rode as fast as the horse could carry her, swinging her sword wildly at the pursuing demons. The air shimmered with flashes of red as creatures swarmed around her and tried to drag her off, caught her reins and tried to tear them from her hands or gnaw them in two, as they ripped at her hair and clothes. She felt blood trickle down her back. Though they were physically weak, their claws were sharp.

The guards at the Gate of Gold saw her coming and flung themselves into the ditches on either side of the road. She risked a glance over her shoulder as they scrambled up, shouting curses. Dayme and Daphne were right behind her. The demons had no interest in them at all. It was the jewel they were after.

She raced up Safe Haven Street and onto the Avenue of Temples. The way was suddenly blocked by gladiators and priests all clustered at the comer of the Rankan Temple. At her cries they turned, dropping shovels and tools, and scattered out of the way. A wide, black pit yawned before her. Even as her eyes widened in surprise, she felt the horse's muscles bunch. She hugged the animal with her knees as it leaped the pit and crashed to the other side, its great hooves hurling dirt.

All the way up the steps of the temple, she fought demons, until the fire faded from her consecrated blade. She threw it down, screaming with frustration, and clutched the diamond to her breasts as the demons swarmed around her. But Dayrne and Daphne were swiftly at her side, their blades still bright and glowing. "Get inside!" Dayme shouted, pushing her toward the temple entrance. "Rashan's waiting! We'll try to hold these things here!"

Chenaya ran inside. A pair of young acolyte priests heaved the great doors closed behind her. It did no good. The demons followed, passing right through the heavy wood, like ghosts.

"Here!" Rashan called from the altar at the front of the temple. Savankala's sunburst had been lowered on its golden chains until its points touched the floor. Rashan stood before it, waving frantically to her. A half-dozen priests waited on each chain to hoist it aloft again.

"Hurry!" Rashan urged as she reached his side. Demons flew down the aisles toward them. "Place it right in the center," he instructed, pointing to a position on the sunburst.

"Where?" she cried in confusion, staring. Only a couple of grooves and notches had been carved into the metal, far too wide to hold the Fire in God's Eye. "There's no mounting!"

Rashan snatched the diamond from her and held it to the sunburst. Then he took something from his robe pocket, slammed it over the diamond, gave it a twist, and stood back.

Within a strange bubble of translucent blue, the Fire in God's Eye began to shine with a greater light, igniting the sunburst, itself. As it had last night when she first brought the diamond, the sunburst exploded with a pure white luminescence that filled the temple. The priests cried out, shielding their eyes, falling to the floor to hide their faces. The demons, too, shrieked with despair. As the light touched them, they broke apart like brittle things, and the nieces wafted away into nothingness.

When the last demon was gone, the light from the sunburst ebbed. All that remained was a soft golden glow that issued from the sunburst's heart.

Chenaya rose to her feet and helped Rashan to his. "What was that bubble?" she asked breathlessly. "That thing you put over the diamond?"

A rare small grin broke over Rashan's face. "Beysib glass," he answered. "It's something new they've started making while you've been gone. There wasn't time to sculpt a proper mounting into the metal, so I improvised."

Chenaya raised an eyebrow in amazement. "A bowl?" she said.

The old priest shrugged. "It worked, didn't it?" He turned and gazed at the sunburst. Tentatively, he reached out and touched it with his fingertips. It was more than a symbolic image now. It was holy. It contained a fragment of the sun-god's power. "The Rankan priests will try to seize it back," he murmured lowly so his fellow priests wouldn't overhear-

Chenaya shook her head. "No. Since I was successful, they know it is Savankala's will. They still have the twin stone. The Bright Father has not forsaken Ranke, but now his favor also falls on Sanctuary."

There was a heavy, frantic pounding on the temple doors, and shouts from the other side. At Rashan's nod, the acolytes nearest drew back the bar and tugged them open. The entrance immediately filled with gladiators ready to do battle. When they saw that the fight was already over, they lowered their weapons, looking almost disappointed.

Daphne sighed. "Well, since there's nothing more to do in here," she said to Chenaya, "you should come see what they dug up from under the cornerstone."

They all backed outside. On the ground near the pit lay the shroudcovered form from Chenaya's visions. She bent down and lifted the cloth slowly from its face. "Ugh!" was all she managed. She moved quickly away, sca

"Looks a lot like Kadakithis the morning after our wedding night," Daphne said. She nudged Dayme in the ribs. "I was kind of hard on him his first time."

Dayrne's expression betrayed nothing. "I should hope it was the other way around," he answered.

Leyn gestured for some of the gladiators to carry the thing away. Then he turned to Chenaya and Rashan. "It wasn't a body at all," he explained. "Rather, pieces of many bodies all stitched clumsily together to make a simulacrum of a corpse." He rubbed the back of his head. "For the life of me, I can't figure why someone would go to that kind of trouble."

"To pollute the temple," Rashan answered, his eyes filling with a sudden understanding. "Vashanka demanded a human sacrifice to consecrate this place. It was to become one of the Great Temples of the Empire, but from the begi