MORG STIFFENED AND LALI FAIRLY JUMPED at his side as the cultist strode torward them. Morg and the girl were clothed from head to foot in red cloaks that concealed their true features -- but had the man penetrated their crude disguises?

He stopped before them, trying to peer up into the folds of Morg's hood to see his face. Morg nonchalantly angled his head away. "Why are you empty handed?" demanded the man. "Were you not sent to retrieve a crate?"

Morg stared at the floor a moment, belatedly realizing that the man suspected nothing. Slowly, Morg nodded. "There was a problem," he mumbled quietly, hoping the man would not detect his foreign accent. "Perhaps you can suggest a solution." Morg nudged the door back open with his shoulder, careful that the cloak did not open and reveal his fair skin.

Impatiently, the man strode into the storage room. "What is it? What can be complicated about-" Morg grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed his face into the wall. He slumped unconscious at the barbarian's feet.

"Keep watch," Morg hissed as he dragged the man behind the nearest tapestry. When he was done, he joined Lali at the door and peered once more into the hall. Cultists were moving back and fourth in a manner that Morg recognized from his years as a soldier-for-hire.

They appeared to be mobilizing. There were many men bare-chested and dressed in crimson skirts, but there were many more dressed in the crimson cloaks Morg and the girl had appropriated. Given that the two cloaked men he had encountered wore armour beneath their cloaks, he suspected that these others did too. "Storim's foul breath," he mumbled. "I think we're just in time to witness civil war, girl."

She pressed close to him. "This is terrible."

Morg pursed his lips. "Not necessarily for us. There's so much chaos, we should be able to go unnoticed and just follow the throng out of here." So saying, and with Lali at his side, Morg moved into the hall and joined the traffic of bodies. Keeping his head down, and hoping none would notice his pale ankles, Morg pressed through the sea of ebon bodies.

Lali tried to grab his hand for comfort, but he brushed her off. He suspected it would draw some attention if two priests were seen walking the halls, hand in hand. At last they emerged into a vast, high ceilinged chamber. The floor was marked with weird, ancient patterns that resembled nothing Morg knew, and he liked it not at all.

The tide of armed men did not halt here and, instead, continued on, through a wide, arched passage. With Lali still at his side, Morg followed along. The passage was dark, and the mob moved forward as much by the press of the bodies next to them, as by any visual sense of where they were going. Morg, however, was relieved to feel the earth slant upward beneath him.

He leaned toward Lali. "We're going to see daylight after all, girl. Wait for my signal. We'll break away from this mob the first chance we get. Then we'll head to the city's outskirts. If this is leading to the fight I think it is, we shouldn't have too much trouble stealing a horse in the confusion."

"You mean...leave Ravatheth?" She seemed shocked by the thought.

"I've no loyalty to any man here. These cultists would kill me as an infidel and the ruling authorities had me thrown in a dungeon. Good riddance to the lot of them. And you -- you're a slave. Away from here, we'll be free to do as we please." He resisted an urge to reach under her cloak and pat the bare bottom he knew was there.

Suddenly he squinted as burning light flooded ahead of them, and the small army marched dutifully out into daylight. Despite the glare hurting his eyes, grown accustomed to the dark as they had become, he inhaled gratefully of the dry, hot air. He had not seen the outside for days, not since he was first tossed in the dungeons on trumped up charges.

The underground passage seemed to open up onto a square in a poorer section of the city, the dilapidated buildings encircling them either deserted, or the inhabitants wisely keeping their heads down. Slowly, he became aware that the cloaked men were clumsily forming themselves into phalanxes, and Morg hastily joined a row, pulling Lali with him. The ever present murmur of voices subsided quickly.

Unsurely, Morg glanced about, but so far, none seemed to suspect him and the girl as being other than what they appeared: loyal soldiers of Shalli.

"Hear me, legions of the Faithful," shouted a voice, weirdly high-pitched, but not quite feminine. Morg looked up and was surprised to see a dusky-skinned boy held aloft in a bronze-platted chair supported on the shoulders of four men at the far end of the square. Then he remembered the rumours that the cult was ruled by a boy -- a mad boy who fancied himself a reincarnated prophet.

But what truly caught his eye was the blood red glimmer at the boy's breast -- dangling from his necklace was the largest ruby Morg had ever seen. He remembered Lali mentioning the jewel, the Bloodstone of All Souls -- and his own idle thought that, as a hunted outlaw, such a jewel might well buy some security for him. So entranced was he, that he barely remembered to listen to the boy's words.

"Today is the day of our ascension," shouted the self-declared Majarahbii. "Today we walk the streets, not draped in shadows of night, but in the bright glow of day. Today we purge the infidels from Ravatheth and install a pious regime dedicated to the will of Shalli. A regime that welcomes all to its embrace, all those who willingly convert...and will reward with death any who do not. Let the people of the city choose their master...and live or die by that decision. Those who oppose us have slain themselves...you are but the instruments of their suicide."

The words were different, but Morg had heard the sentiments before in a dozen different lands, wherever fanatics lurked. But he was unsure what it was that made the boy -- the so-called Holy Majarahbii -- so bold. What had changed the political situation since he had first been imprisoned? Of course, Morg had no way of knowing that his very arrest had driven a wedge between Prince Shayanaq and the army he would need to defend him, nor that the discontentment of the populace had spilled over into open protests in the last few days.

Nor could he suspect the robbery that occured but hours before, in the twilight hours of dawn.

"Behold," continued the boy, "the sign that will bring even many unbelievers into our fold."

Morg grunted as three men approached the boy from the sidelines -- three men dressed, not in the spartan crimson of the cultists, but in the ornate finery of the city's nobility.

Cursing, Morg threw off his concealing cloak and drew his sword. There was nothing for it but to fight their way clear -- fight through an army of blood mad fanatics...

Back to Episode 7: Trapped in the Temple!

On to Episode 9: I am the true Majarahbii!

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