There was a ceremony of some sort taking place on the circular black floor far below in the sickly green glow coming from the altar. Sparhawk’s mind recoiled from the notion of calling that ceremony a religious rite. The celebrants cavorted naked before the idol. Sparhawk was not some unworldly, cloistered monk. He was acquainted with the world, but the levels of perversion being demonstrated in that rite turned his stomach. The orgy which had so engrossed the primitive Elene Zemochs back in the mountains had been child-like, almost pure, by comparison. These celebrants appeared to be attempting to duplicate the perversions of non-humans, and their fixed stares and galvanic movements clearly showed that they would continue the ceremony until they died from sheer excess. The lower tiers of that huge, stair-stepped basin were packed with green-robed figures who raised a groaning discordant chant, an empty sound devoid of any thought or emotion.

Then a slight movement caught Sparhawk’s eye, and he looked quickly towards his right. A group of people were gathered on the top terrace a hundred yards or more away beneath the leprous white statue of something that must have been dredged from the depths of madness. One of the figures had white hair.

Sparhawk twisted around and signalled to Ulath to pull him back up again.

‘Well?’ Kalten asked him.

‘It’s all one big room,’ Sparhawk murmured. ‘The idol is over on the far side, and there are wide terraces leading down to a floor in the middle.’

‘What’s that noise?’ Tynian asked.

‘They’re holding some sort of rite. I think that chant’s a part of it.’

‘I’m not concerned about their religion,’ Ulath rumbled. ‘Are there any soldiers?’

Sparhawk shook his head.

‘That’s helpful. Anything else?’

‘Yes. I need some magic, Sephrenia. Martel and the others are gathered on the top terrace. They’re about a hundred paces off to the right. We need to know what they’re saying. Are we close enough for your spell to work?’

She nodded. ‘Let’s move back away from the stairs,’ she suggested. ‘The spell makes a certain amount of light, and we don’t want anyone to know that we’re here just yet.’

They retreated back along the dusty pathway, and Sephrenia took Sir Bevier’s polished shield from Berit. ‘This should do it,’ she said. She quickly cast the spell and released it. The knights gathered around the suddenly glowing shield, peering at the hazy figures appearing on its mirror-like surface. The voices coming from the image were tinny-sounding, but they were intelligible.

‘Thine assurances to me that my gold would buy thee that throne from which thou couldst further our purposes were hollow, Annias,’ Otha was saying in that gurgling rumble.

‘It was Sparhawk again, Your Majesty,’ Annias tried to excuse himself in an almost grovelling tone. ‘He disrupted things – as we had feared he would.’