He lowered the boat ten feet above the ground and slid it through the arch.
Guided by a dim light ahead, Ulan Dhor maneuvered the boat down the dark passage, through another arch; and they were in the nave.
The podium where the tablet sat was like the citadel of a walled city. The first obstacle was a wide pit, backed by a glassy wall. Then there was a moat of sulfur-colored liquid, and beyond, in an open space, five men kept a torpid watch. Undetected Ulan Dhor moved the boat through the upper shadows and halted directly over the podium.
“Ready now,” he muttered, and grounded the boat. The glistening tablet was almost within reach. He raised the dome; Elai leaned out, seized the tablet. The five guards gave an anguished roar, rushed forward.
“Back!” cried Ulan Dhor. He warded off a flying spear with his sword. She drew back with the tablet, Ulan Dhor slammed the dome. The guards leapt on the ship, clawing at the smooth metal, beating at it with their fists. The ship rose high; one by one they lost their grip, fell screaming to the floor.
Back through the arch, down the black passageway, through the entrance and out into the dark sky. Behind them a great horn set up a crazy clangor.
Ulan Dhor examined his prize — an oval sheet of transparent substance bearing a dozen lines of meaningless marks.
“We have won!” said Elai raptly. “You are the Lord of Ampridatvir!”
“Half yet remains,” said Ulan Dhor. “There is still the tablet in the Temple of Cazdal.”
“But — it is madness! Already you have —”
“One is useless without the other.”
Her wild arguments subsided only as they hovered over the arch into Cazdal’s Temple.
As the boat glided through the dark gap it struck a thread which dropped a great load of stones from a chute. The first of these, striking the sloping side of the air-car, buffeted it away. Ulan Dhor cursed. The guards would be alert and watchful.
He drifted along at the very top of the passage, hidden in the murk. Presently two guards, bearing torches and careful of their steps, came to investigate the sound. They passed directly below the boat, and Ulan Dhor hastened forward, through the arch into the nave. As in the Temple of Pansiu, the tablet gleamed in the middle of a fortress.
The guards were wide awake, nervously watching the opening.
“Boldness, now!” said Ulan Dhor. He sent the boat darting across the walls and pits and seething moat, settled beside the podium, snapped the dome back, sprang out. He seized the tablet as the guards came roaring forward, spears extended. The foremost flung his spear; Ulan Dhor struck it down and tossed the tablet into the boat.
But they were upon him; he would be impaled if he sought to climb within the boat. He sprang forward, hewed off the shaft of one spear, chopped at one man’s shoulder on the back-sweep, seized the shaft of the third spear, and pulled the man into range of his sword point. The third guard fell back, shouting for help. Ulan Dhor turned, leapt into the boat. The guard rushed forward, Ulan Dhor whirled and met him with the point of his sword in his cheek. Spouting blood and wailing hysterically, the guard fell back. Ulan Dhor threw the lift lever; the boat rose high and moved toward the opening.
And presently the alarm horn at Cazdal’s Temple was adding its harsh yell to the sound from across the city.
The boat drifted slowly through the sky.
“Look!” said Elai, grasping his arm. By torchlight men and women crowded and milled in the streets — Greens and Grays, panicked by the message of the horns.
Elai gasped. “Ulan Dhor! I see! I see! The men in Green! Is it possible … Have they always been …”
“The brain-spell has broken,” said Ulan Dhor, “and not only for you. Below they see each other, too …”
For the first time in memory, Greens and Grays looked at each other. Their faces twisted, contorted. In the flicker of torches Ulan Dhor saw them drawing back in revulsion from each other, and heard the tumult of their cries: “Demon! … Demon! … Gray ghost! … Vile Green Demon! …”
Thousands of obsessed torch-bearers sidled past each other, glowering, reviling each other, screaming in hate and fear. They were all mad, he thought — tangled, constricted of brain …
As by a secret signal, the crowd seethed into battle, and the hateful yells curdled Ulan Dhor’s blood. Elai turned sobbing away. Terrible work was done, on men, women, children — no matter who the victim, if he wore the opposite color.
A louder snarling arose at the edge of the mob — a joyful sound, and a dozen shambling Gauns appeared, towering above the Greens and Grays. They rended, tore, ripped, and insane hate melted before insane fear. Greens and Grays separated, and ran to their homes, and the Gauns roamed the streets alone.
Ulan Dhor tore his glance away and held his forehead. “Was this my doing? … Was this a deed of mine?”
“Sooner or later it would have happened,” said Elai dully. “Unless Earth waned and died first …”
Ulan Dhor picked up the two tablets. “And here is what I sought to attain — the tablets of Rogol Domedonfors. They pulled me a thousand leagues across the Melantine; I have them in my hands now, and they are like worthless shards of glass …”
The boat floated high, and Ampridatvir became a setting of pale crystals in the starlight. In the luminescence of the instrument panel, Ulan Dhor fitted the two tablets together. The marks merged, became characters, and the characters bore the words of the ancient magician:
Faithless children — Rogol Domedonfors dies, and so lives forever in the Ampridatvir he has loved and served! When intelligence and good will restore order to the city; or when blood and steel teaches the folly of bridled credulity and passion, and all but the toughest dead: — then shall these tablets be read. And I say to him who reads it, go to the Tower of Fate with the yellow dome, ascend to the topmost floor, show red to the left eye of Rogol Domedonfors, yellow to the right eye, and then blue to both; do this, I say, and share the power of Rogol Domedonfors.
Ulan Dhor asked, “Where is the Tower of Fate?”
Elai shook her head. “There is Rodeil’s Tower, and the Red Tower and the Tower of the Screaming Ghost, and the Tower of Trumpets and the Bird’s Tower, and the Tower of Gauns — but I know of no Tower of Fate.”
“Which tower has a yellow dome?”
“I don’t know.”
“We will search in the morning.”
“In the morning,” she said leaning against him drowsily.
“The morning …” said Ulan Dhor, fondling her yellow hair.
When the old red sun rose, they drifted back over the city and found the people of Ampridatvir awake before them, intent on murder.
The fighting and the killing was not so wild as the night before. It was a craftier slaughter. Stealthy groups of men waylaid stragglers, or broke into houses to strangle women and children.
