"I am Bheleu!" cried the monster in Garth's body; he thrust the blade upward at the heavens, to be answered by a crash of thunder and a blinding flash of lightning. The bolt struck, spattered, and sizzled across the spiderweb metal frame of the ruined dome; sparks showered upon the worshippers, who danced maniacally, screaming their devotion. A second bolt came on the heels of the first, leaping from the clouds to the peak of the dome, and thence to the point of the sword; it poured through Garth's body and blasted the bonfire apart at his feet, scattering burning wood.
The thunder was now a steady pounding as other bolts showered across the city; Garth's hands fell, the sword still clutched in them, and his eyes blazed crimson as the blade chopped through the skull of the high priest of Bheleu.
The worshippers screamed in frenzy, crying the name of their god.
The blade swung up, red with blood and gleaming gold in the firelight; lightning flashed, silver steel shone for an instant, and the sword came down, hacking through a man's neck, spraying blood into the scattered fire where it sizzled and stank.
"I am destruction!"
The worshippers cried hoarse approval, and surged toward him, forgetting their dance. The blade blazed upward, flashed down; blood showered unnoticed across fire, earth, and flesh. There was no trace of resistance; the eager worshippers flung themselves in the weapon's path as the earth shook and the sky raged, and the monster wielding it merely laughed.
For half an hour their god walked among his people, slashing aside all who approached him; for one insane half-hour he brought the total destruction their creed proclaimed holy. The priests of Bheleu had been warriors, for their faith required it. None shrank from the sight of blood, nor cringed away from the dismembered and disemboweled corpses of their comrades; instead they fought amongst themselves for the right to approach and be slain, their religious fervor blended with the old fighting fury, the death-wish of those who slay made manifest.
Throughout, the thunder rolled and roared, crashing arrhythmically about the ruins, and lightning blazed again and again across the open dome. Every so often a bolt would strike the exposed steel, and the temple walls would shake. With the agility of the warriors they once were, the worshippers kept their feet and pressed forward to the slaughter.
At last, as the dripping blade swung flashing upward for the final stroke, there came a crash of thunder like none before; the last devotee fell to his knees before his god, deafened and blinded, as the sword blazed red and silver against the sky, whirling about the head of the crazed overman-monster. It swooped down, like a hawk upon its prey, and struck the man through, entering the front of his throat and protruding between his shoulder-blades; no more metal showed, but only blood, red, brown, and black, coating the blade and spattered liberally across the temple floor.
The final lightning bolt's pealing echoed among the shattered walls, covering the sudden silence that fell with the death of the last screaming priest; overhead, the blasted dome sagged, twisted, and broke. Snapping sparks were strewn amid the dying remnants of the pyre, and drops of molten metal flew hissing downward. The framework continued to crumple, collapsing slowly, as the storm finally broke, whipping fat raindrops across the prostrate corpses and the upturned face of their slayer.
For long moments the overman stood motionless; rain filled his eyes and ran in cool streams across his face. The sword was still clutched in his hands, its hilt slimed with gore, its blade still thrust through his final victim. The madness was passing, fading, shrinking into itself somewhere within him; he blinked away the rain, and lowered his gaze from the storm.
He looked at the sagging, slack-jawed figure impaled on his sword, at the score of slaughtered men, at the scattered remains of the bonfire dying in the rain. His hands fell from the hilt, and sword and cadaver tumbled forward at his feet. He stepped back, appalled, and sank to his knees; then, for the first time in a hundred and forty years, Garth wept, as the shattered metal of the dome crashed to the ground around him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
He came to as the first glimmer of dawn broke through the clouds; he was lying sprawled on the dirt floor of the temple, surrounded by tortured scraps of metal and ragged, red-clothed corpses. Ashes and charred wood were scattered at his feet.
Before him, the elongated hilt of the great broadsword protruded from the throat of his final victim; the gem set in the pommel gleamed as red as blood, but the blade had been washed clean by the rain. In the dim light the metal was dull gray.
He got slowly to his feet, and the events of the night seeped back into his mind; he grimaced in disgust.
Here was the destruction the Seers of Weideth had foreseen. What had come over him?
He found himself unwilling to admit that he had in truth been possessed by some higher power, acting as no more than a puppet; but then, the thought that he had within him such berserk savagery, so easily roused, was almost equally unacceptable. True, his rage and hatred of the Aghadites still smouldered, and his anger at the Baron of Skelleth likewise. Had the babblings of that senile old P'hulite suggested to his suppressed darker side that he take out his aggressions thus? Perhaps the dance of Bheleu had hypnotic properties designed to release a watcher's pent-up emotions; perhaps some mystic fumes, invisible and unnoticed, had affected him. He had heard that volcanoes produced such gasses, and Dыsarra was built on the slopes of a great volcano.
It really mattered very little; what was done was done, and could in no way be altered.
He recalled the roaring storm, of which nothing remained but, puddles and dispersing clouds; the dome had been blasted away. He remembered the fiery lightning-had it actually struck him? That could not be. He looked at his hands; the palms were burnt black. He shuddered. Had he really pulled the sword red-hot from the fire?
No. He rejected that. The whole thing could not have been as he remembered; he must have been under some magical influence, whether hypnosis or hallucinogen or even actual possession he did not know. He had slain the entire cult of Bheleu, yes; there had been a storm, and lightning had destroyed the ruins of the dome; but beyond that, he refused to accept any of it. He had no idea how he had burned his hands, or how the bonfire had been spread about, but he rejected his memories of those events.
His hands were numb, he realized; the nerves might well have been destroyed. At the very least they had been temporarily overloaded. If they were intact, at any minute sensation might begin to return, and he was quite sure that the result would be pain like nothing he had ever suffered before-except possibly once, when he had recovered slowly from a wizard's deathspell. He cringed at the thought. That experience was not something he could bear to think about.
He still had one more temple to rob; and his escape to make good; he was a wanted fugitive. He could not afford to waste any time. If he waited for his hands to heal, he might be hiding and running about the city for weeks. On the other hand, if he moved quickly, perhaps he could finish his task before the pain began, and before any infection set in-if such were to happen. It might be that his hands were permanently ruined.
He did not care to consider that; instead, he snatched the sword of Bheleu from the final corpse and wiped the remaining blood off on the man's robe. He had not seen the temple of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, but he somehow thought he knew where it must be. The dead have returned to the earth, humans were wont to say; death is a part of the world. It was appropriate, then, for the god of death to have his temple in the earth itself.